Re: [tdf-discuss] IAccessible2, IBM, Oracle (was: (...) Proposal to join Apache OpenOffice)

2011-07-29 Thread Michael Meeks 
Hi Christophe,

Thanks for your mail.

On Wed, 2011-07-27 at 10:50 +0200, Christophe Strobbe wrote:
 CS: I agree that this is not how open source development should be done.
 My intention was not to defend this but to highlight the importance
 of IAccessible2.

I appreciate its importance. Indeed, if someone wants to continue the
missing forward-porting / testing piece that Malte was doing to the IBM
CWS (dumped vs. a very old version) - they are most welcome - I'd love
to see the patch in LibreOffice. I'm happy to help review / merge it,
and/or mentor people to get that work done.

Having said that - there is hope that IBM will finally do the right
thing, and do this work themselves (indeed they've re-re-committed to do
so already for the Apache version), that will make it easier for us to
merge it. This highlights the uncertainty problem plaguing this area: it
is pointless to invest our rather scarce resources into something that
someone else claims they will do soon anyway. So - by saying we'll do
it and by then not doing it - the effect is to stop others from doing
it.

 The intention of my original response was to draw attention to
 IAccessible2, which is a valuable contribution in its own right, even
 though you clearly expected more from IBM.

Sure sure, its valuable. How much work it was we'll see when we see how
much code it is. My suspicion is that it is under 10k LOC of bridge code
(at least the ~equivalent atk binding is much less than that). But sure,
that small piece of code has a very real usefulness and no-one should
debate that.

 CS: If you think it's OK for blind users on Windows to wait another
 two years [1],

Incidentally, everyone not programming on fixing this problem thinks it
is ok for people to wait. If they can't program - that is fine - that
is how most programmers started out, so lets expand it to include
everyone not learning to program.

Sadly many people seem to pass the time, while waiting, by griping
about the fact that everyone else is just waiting, and no-one is
working / learning how to improve the software for them. The
unacceptable irony of that appears to escape them strangely.

In a world of very many different priorities, it is necessary to choose
what to do; and working on something for which a duplication of effort
has been promised for years is hard to get excited about I'm afraid.

All the best,

Michael.

-- 
 michael.me...@novell.com  , Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot


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[tdf-discuss] IAccessible2, IBM, Oracle (was: (...) Proposal to join Apache OpenOffice)

2011-07-28 Thread Christophe Strobbe 

Hi Christian, All,


This is my fifth attempt to send a response to 
the list (after previous attempts on 5, 8, 15 and 
26 July). I hope it gets through this time.



At 18:21 5-7-2011, Christian Lohmaier wrote:

Hi Christophe, *,

On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 4:50 PM, Christophe Strobbe
christophe.stro...@esat.kuleuven.be wrote:
 At 16:14 5-7-2011, Christian Lohmaier wrote:
 On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 3:34 PM, Christophe Strobbe
 christophe.stro...@esat.kuleuven.be wrote:
  At 23:16 4-6-2011, Christian Lohmaier wrote:
 [...]
 Well, as seen on this list (by Malte's post), apparently there has
 been work on a *private* cws that nobody in the community (and yes,
 people who are working on private cws are not part of the community
 in this regard - they are of course for that part of their work that
 happens in public)
 All promises IBM is making/has made so far is only lip service for me.
 I only believe it after I see the actual contributions from them.
 (And as written I don't consider code dumps that need a man-year of
 work to get integrated as contribution)

 If Oracle asks IBM to implement IAccessible2 on version 3.1 and releases
 OpenOffice.org 3.2 before IBM has submitted 
the IAccessible2 implementation,

 how is IBM to blame?

Reality check please. 1st of all: What is stuff you know, and what is
stuff you guess?
Do you know that the 3.1 based ia2 dump/work is because Oracle asked for it?
If Oracle asked for it, do you know when Oracle asked for it?
Do you think Oracle really is so stupid to explicitly ask for code
based on an old branch?
If Oracle did ask for it, and IBM did contribute - why wasn't the
cws integrated?


CS:
What reality check? I talked to and exchanged mails with people in
Oracle and IBM. Since September 2008 I have been involved in a European
RD project on accessibility where Oracle (previously Sun) is one of the
biggest partners. So I talked to accessibility folks at Oracle. That
is reality.
Yes, IBM donated an IAccessible2 implementation to Oracle. Malte
Timmermann talked about this at FOSDEM 2011:
http://www.fosdem.org/2011/schedule/event/ooo_accessibility.

Just like you I don't like secret deals about open source projects.
I agree it is better if code contributions should happen on public
repositories. But that does not mean these things don't happen.


At 18:21 5-7-2011, Christian Lohmaier wrote:

2nd) Obviously you cannot integrate something that is not ready.
Why was it not ready? Because nobody worked on it.


CS: I throw your own question back to you: What is stuff you know, and
what is stuff you guess? ;-)


At 18:21 5-7-2011, Christian Lohmaier wrote:

Who could do the
work on it? Of course best the developers who know the code, i.e IBM
developers.
And you cannot delay a release for years. (the cws Caolan mentioned in
the blog-comment was created in 2010-05 - while the branch-off for 3.2
already happened 2009-09 more than half a year earlier)

 Between 3.1 and 3.2 the code had changed and had been moved to another
 type of repository.

Again reality check. Oracle surely did ask for the code to be
contributed against the current, actively being-worked-on codeline.


CS: Again: What is stuff you know, and what is stuff you guess?
Oracle had released a newer version by the time IBM submitted their
code. Fact: this was stated in public at FOSDEM 2011.


At 18:21 5-7-2011, Christian Lohmaier wrote:

A
codeline that is not in feature-freeze. What IBM then delivers is a
completely different question. Also whether Oracle/Sun asks for it in
2008, but IBM delivers in 2010, it's obvious that code makes progress.


CS: Obviously. Nobody is debating that code makes progress.
I don't know when Oracle asked for it.
IBM promised to add IAccessible2 in 2007
IBM joins OpenOffice.org community - will contribute IAccessible2 support:
http://blogs.oracle.com/korn/entry/ibm_joins_openoffice_org_community
(10 September 2007).
A few weeks later IBM wrote they were adding it: IAccessible2 is in or being
implemented in these products today: (...)
* Open Office (IBM is just beginning the contribution effort):
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/schwer/tags/windows?lang=en
(27 September 2007).
In July 2008, people said it that it shouldn't be expected before the end
of 2008 (OpenOffice.org 3.x but not 3.0):
http://www.freelists.org/post/nvda/nvda-and-openoffice,13.
The contribution was mentioned again at teh OpenOffice.org conference
in November 2008 (in a talk by Michael Karasick, Director of Lotus
Development IBM China):
http://blogs.oracle.com/malte/entry/iaccessible2_or_ibm_to_contribute.



At 18:21 5-7-2011, Christian Lohmaier wrote:

 That is the reason for the complex and time-consuming
 integration work that Oracle needed to do for IAccessible2.

NO! Why does it have to be Oracle to do the integration work. Again
one of the points about collaboration. Just uploading a
million-line-codepatch somewhere is not contributing. It is complying
with whatever deals that were signed