Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Greg Smith wrote: I want to read all the e-mails that are important for XO users and I want to skip anything not directly relevant to them. I'll archive and maintain links to the rest in case I need to look something up. Knowing my perspective, let me know if you have any suggestions on how I can optimize my efficiency with the new communication channels. I think the Sugar development list, once moved to sugarlabs.org, will still focus on the same topics. If, and when, the traffic about non-OLPC ports grows to a point where it becomes distracting to core development, we might create additional lists. Cross-posting to multiple Sugarlabs and OLPC lists will be welcome as always. As for the technical aspect of reading multiple lists, can I suggest using gmame.org? Their list archives are very usable and they even relay them over NNTP, which is generally faster than IMAP for a large number of posts. The way I do it, is a little geeky, but I found it optimal: I use procmail recipes based on the Sender header to sort each list into its own server-side Maildir folder. Then, I use IMAP to access it from all my laptops. This lets me comfortably subscribe to ~30 lists for a total of 5GB of mail :-) We can rebuild him, we have the technology ... better than he was before, better, stronger, faster! http://www.technorati.com/videos/youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DaZ9phMCn_Lw It's too bad I have a 3kb/s downlink here in Kathmandu, but I know *exactly* where this quote comes from ;-))) -- \___/ Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/ _| X | Sugar Labs Team - http://www.sugarlabs.org/ \|_O_| It's an education project, not a laptop project! ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Marco Pesenti Gritti wrote: Greg Smith wrote: Hi Bernie, I read the lists in digest except for Sur which I get individually because I was the first admin for that the list (can't seem to turn that off :-( I focus 100% on delivering the best experience possible for users of the 400K XOs shipped so far (50K more shipping every month). So I scan or read all the lists on lists.laptop.org and I try to stay up to date with wiki.laptop.org. Hello Greg, Sugar is a project with a very large scope. Many of the core contributors believes that the resources OLPC is able to devote to it are not going to be sufficient to fullfill it's long term goals or even to get near enough to them. We need to make Sugar available and used also outside OLPC to attract more contributors. That's the very reason of the existence of SugarLabs. On the long term that's going to be very useful to those 400K XOs in the field. That requires to establish Sugar as an independent FOSS project and building a community around it. And it's important for the identity of the project that the mailing lists and other services are available from its domain. After 8.2 is out and we are all a little less pressed, I'd like to propose that: 1 We move [EMAIL PROTECTED] to [EMAIL PROTECTED] OLPC specific issues related to Sugar can be discussed on [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2 We move Fructose git repositories on sugarlabs.org. They would be a couple of good steps towards the long-term goal and they would not hinder in any way the immediate OLPC goals. Cheers, Marco Right, the independent sugar FOSS project is the reason for all this moving. As marco said, we are quite sure that in the end this will help sugar to mature which will directly make the experience on the XO much better. Best, Simon ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Hi Bernie, I read the lists in digest except for Sur which I get individually because I was the first admin for that the list (can't seem to turn that off :-( I focus 100% on delivering the best experience possible for users of the 400K XOs shipped so far (50K more shipping every month). So I scan or read all the lists on lists.laptop.org and I try to stay up to date with wiki.laptop.org. I don't have a lot of capacity to add bookmarks to another site or follow e-mail on another mailman server or list. Like I said, if its important to XO users I'll go wherever you go, but the more we focus the project on a limited set of URLs, the better. Thanks, Greg S Bernie Innocenti wrote: Greg Smith wrote: I prefer it on lists.laptop.org. Mainly because I don't have capacity to watch lists from two mailman servers. What do you mean by this? Do you read the archives rather than subscribing to the lists? It also depends somewhat on the purpose. We need to communicate dependencies, APIs, and other things related to activities on the XO. Hopefully we can use this list for that. I agree with you: keeping developers of activities and Sugar core together on the same list might enable better mutual understanding. And the current traffic is far from scaring anybody. ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Hi Morgan, I prefer it on lists.laptop.org. Mainly because I don't have capacity to watch lists from two mailman servers. It also depends somewhat on the purpose. We need to communicate dependencies, APIs, and other things related to activities on the XO. Hopefully we can use this list for that. I am currently focused entirely on the XO and its users. That's my 2 cents but I'll follow wherever you end up, especially if you can get contact info for the people who have posted activities to: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Activities Thanks, Greg S ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Thanks Martin and Albert for your dissenting opinions. They are valuable. On Sun, Aug 3, 2008 at 13:36, Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 9:47 PM, Morgan Collett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am happy to take on making this communication happen but I really think we need this list. FWIW, Sugar + activities are still somewhat tightly coupled, as Sugar and the underlying OS API are changing. As long as that is true, to maintain an activity to a good standard, you have to keep an eye on devel@ and/or [EMAIL PROTECTED] My rule of thumb is to try and keep people together -- recommending filters sometimes -- until the traffic gets so heavy *and* a distinct subcommunity can be split off. IMHO neither is true here (yet!). In my experience the activity developer community has lost many participants already. Perhaps they weren't going to stay anyway, beyond an initial The flip side is that offering a new ml to a small/medium sized group is a great way to *kill* that group. It is an excellent troll mgmt strategy. The last thing I want to do is fragment the community. Let me add some personal context: I started out writing a couple of activities for MaMaMedia. At that time it was very confusing trying to figure out the state of the platform. Going by the HIG, there was this excellent feature called the Bulletin Board which seemed exactly what I needed. Also, the collaboration features were exactly what I wanted. I had to ask on IRC to find out the bulletin board was non-existant and the collaboration was only partially implemented and only in a single existing activity. I personally found the best approach was to follow all communication channels to try and figure out what worked and what didn't, and what the best way to use the existing features was. I subscribed to all the technical mailing lists. I stayed logged on to IRC and read the backlogs every morning. It worked for me. However, most other activity authors that I was aware of, have vanished. They haven't updated their activities in months (if at all this year). I'm quite certain that mailing devel@ or sugar@ will not get their attention. Those are both high traffic lists, with a lot of traffic not relevant to activities, as Martin Dengler has analysed: 2008/8/3 Martin Dengler [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I'm not sure I agree - sugar@ has so much traffic not relevant to casual activity authors (for example, your Congratulations... thread). I can't believe I did this, but I went through the July sugar@ messages and categorized them into ones I thought would be appropriate for the AA list and ones not (thus for the current sugar@ list). Totals: 808 messages AA - 293 messages 36.3% SS - 515 messages 63.7% You may see the details here: http://dev.laptop.org/~mdengler/sugar_list_july_2008_categorized.txt My hope is to have a mailing list that is the *last* one that an overwhelmed developer will unsubscribe from, so we can still reach them. Regards Morgan ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Morgan Collett wrote: On Sat, Aug 2, 2008 at 15:23, Morgan Collett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I've raised the idea a couple of times to have a mailing list specifically for activity developers, which would be uncluttered by all the traffic on the devel and even sugar lists. That would hopefully have the result that people stay subscribed, or at least notice mails which are important to them. Currently, I'm not even sure which list out of devel and sugar is going to reach more activity developers, hence this cross-post and many others. I've been looking at the OLPC wiki, to see what we are advising contributors to sign up for: * http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developers_program#Project_Hosting points to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Project_hosting which says subscribe to devel@ when asking for project hosting. * http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developers_program#Expectations_of_Recipients points to http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Developers/Communication#Minimum_Communication_Requirements which says subscribe to community-news@ and [EMAIL PROTECTED] So IMO the sugar list is more relevant, but the devel list is more likely to reach everyone. Cross-posting to every list all the time seems counter to netiquette, and as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossposting says, if all messages were crossposted to every group, then every group would look exactly the same. What I want out of this discussion is a clear recommendation for activity authors to subscribe to a particular place that we can count on, to the extent that that is possible. We can have them subscribe to devel and apply filters (via the mailman web interface) to use predefined topics (regexps) that, for example, contain the string breaks-python or whatever. -FFM ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Greg Smith wrote: I prefer it on lists.laptop.org. Mainly because I don't have capacity to watch lists from two mailman servers. What do you mean by this? Do you read the archives rather than subscribing to the lists? It also depends somewhat on the purpose. We need to communicate dependencies, APIs, and other things related to activities on the XO. Hopefully we can use this list for that. I agree with you: keeping developers of activities and Sugar core together on the same list might enable better mutual understanding. And the current traffic is far from scaring anybody. -- \___/ Bernie Innocenti - http://www.codewiz.org/ _| X | Sugar Labs Team - http://www.sugarlabs.org/ \|_O_| It's an education project, not a laptop project! ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 12:45 AM, Morgan Collett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my experience the activity developer community has lost many participants already. Perhaps they weren't going to stay anyway, beyond an initial ... I personally found the best approach was to follow all communication channels to try and figure out what worked and what didn't, and what Good point. As mention, there are a lot of things to keep track of. At the moment, that is the nature of the beast - the platform has a high rate of change. Once the rate of change slows down, it will be easier for activity authors. Right now, well... Those are both high traffic lists, with a lot of traffic not relevant to activities, as Martin Dengler has analysed: ... I can't believe I did this, but I went through the July sugar@ messages and categorized them into ones I thought would be appropriate for the AA list and ones not (thus for the current sugar@ list). Totals: 808 messages AA - 293 messages 36.3% SS - 515 messages 63.7% Sidenote: I think *any* developer these days is used to lists where they are interested in only a % of the traffic. If you are a lead or core dev of a small project, your project's list is probably 100% for you, but in *every* other case, you read 10% of the emails. I read 100% of server [EMAIL PROTECTED], 20% of [EMAIL PROTECTED], 5% of [EMAIL PROTECTED], 5% of moodle.org list traffic, 2% of fedora-devel-list, etc. It would be wholly inappropriate for me to complain on those lists about irrelevant traffic -- every reader slices and dices them in their own way. Some activity authors need to keep track of camera bugs. Others are sensitive to timing issues (realtime-ish needs?) or storage (large media?) or touchpad bugs, or multi-touch plans. Or specific library changes. cheers, martin -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
Another simplement argument: this will be clearer for users to know where to send feedback. If you have a question about a particular activity, ask on the activity list. For other questions ask on the Sugar list. -- Bastien ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
2008/8/3 Martin Dengler [EMAIL PROTECTED] On Sat, Aug 02, 2008 at 05:10:54PM -0400, Benjamin M. Schwartz wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Bastien wrote: | - announce new activities | - announce changes in ownership | - check for dead/agonizing/orphaned activities | - discuss API and dependancies issues All of these things are perfect for [EMAIL PROTECTED] They are precisely what sugar@ is for. They do not cover everything sugar@ is for[1], or is currently used for (see next point). There is no need for an additional mailing list. I'm not sure I agree - sugar@ has so much traffic not relevant to casual activity authors (for example, your Congratulations... thread). I can't believe I did this, but I went through the July sugar@ messages and categorized them into ones I thought would be appropriate for the AA list and ones not (thus for the current sugar@ list). Totals: 808 messages AA - 293 messages 36.3% SS - 515 messages 63.7% You may see the details here: http://dev.laptop.org/~mdengler/sugar_list_july_2008_categorized.txthttp://dev.laptop.org/%7Emdengler/sugar_list_july_2008_categorized.txt - --Ben Martin 1. From http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar : Sugar is the internal code name for everything users see. This includes the sharing and collaboration experience, base set of tasks, and the entire desktop stack. This mailing list is to discuss the design and the implementation of that effort. (adding Sugar back to the conversation, not sure why it was dropped) I'm generally the first one to argue against YAML (yet-another-mailing-list) as I'm already subscribed to almost 30 OLPC-related ones... However I do believe that the idea of a mailing-list targeted to activity-developers has some merit to it. Contrary to Albert's comment I don't think an announcement only list for when the API breaks is enough, this is such a fundamental thing that should be communicated on all channels (mailing lists, wiki pages, sugar almanac, you name it) when it happens. The fact that this hasn't been done in the past just shows how much is lacking when it comes to making it easy for people to contribute activities without having to follow all the conversations on sugar, devel, etc. Looking at the big picture we we should be thinking about how mailing-lists are going to be used down the road anyway, for example whether there's going to be a gen. 2 (XOXO) list for all things related to that project. There we're going to have the same issue that potentially some (but definitely not all!) issues will overlap with current devel- and sugar discussions, but I guess that's what cross-posting is for. Getting back to the discussion at hand: In a perfect world an activity-developer would not have to worry about core-issues as mostly discussed on sugar and devel, as that stabilized *information* (the outcome and decisions based on the discussions on the lists) would be accessible somewhere on the API doc, wiki, sugar-almanac, activity handbook, etc. The activity-developers mailing-list could then be used to exchange tricks of the trade, ask questions (such as Alex's current one about the difference between sugar-launch and launching from the home-view), solicit help for testing and localization (CC'ing the appropriate mailing-lists in the process) and just plainly sharing ideas and suggestions for activities without actually writing them oneself (another big issue because at the moment we don't have a forum for children, parents, educators, content creators, graphic designers, etc. to share their input). Anyway, just my 2 jet lagged euro-cents, Christoph ___ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel -- Christoph Derndorfer Co-Editor, OLPCnews url: www.olpcnews.com e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 9:47 PM, Morgan Collett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I am happy to take on making this communication happen but I really think we need this list. FWIW, Sugar + activities are still somewhat tightly coupled, as Sugar and the underlying OS API are changing. As long as that is true, to maintain an activity to a good standard, you have to keep an eye on devel@ and/or [EMAIL PROTECTED] My rule of thumb is to try and keep people together -- recommending filters sometimes -- until the traffic gets so heavy *and* a distinct subcommunity can be split off. IMHO neither is true here (yet!). The flip side is that offering a new ml to a small/medium sized group is a great way to *kill* that group. It is an excellent troll mgmt strategy. cheers, m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list)
Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: FWIW, Sugar + activities are still somewhat tightly coupled, as Sugar and the underlying OS API are changing. As long as that is true, to maintain an activity to a good standard, you have to keep an eye on devel@ and/or [EMAIL PROTECTED] My rule of thumb is to try and keep people together -- recommending filters sometimes -- until the traffic gets so heavy *and* a distinct subcommunity can be split off. IMHO neither is true here (yet!). (Fair enough. In any case, my awareness about Sugar and the activities development is not strong enough to dispute about the relevance of such a list -- 'was just dropping a few opinions.) -- Bastien ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list)
On Sun, Aug 03, 2008 at 10:43:30AM -0500, Bastien wrote: Martin Langhoff [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: FWIW, Sugar + activities are still somewhat tightly coupled, as Sugar and the underlying OS API are changing. As long as that is true, to maintain an activity to a good standard, you have to keep an eye on devel@ and/or [EMAIL PROTECTED] My rule of thumb is to try and keep people together -- recommending filters sometimes -- until the traffic gets so heavy *and* a distinct subcommunity can be split off. IMHO neither is true here (yet!). (Fair enough. In any case, my awareness about Sugar and the activities development is not strong enough to dispute about the relevance of such a list -- 'was just dropping a few opinions.) As opposed to a new list, we could use the topics function of mailman to enable people to select that they only want python breakage emails, for example, that contain a certin regexp. This topic can be addded by the list admin, per http://www.esosoft.com/support/mailinglist/mailman/topics.html -FFM ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 11:47, Morgan Collett [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 04:42, Bastien [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Any follow-up on the idea of having a precise list of maintainers for all Sugar activities? Even just the email address from the git repo would be nice. I've raised the idea a couple of times to have a mailing list specifically for activity developers, which would be uncluttered by all the traffic on the devel and even sugar lists. That would hopefully have the result that people stay subscribed, or at least notice mails which are important to them. Currently, I'm not even sure which list out of devel and sugar is going to reach more activity developers, hence this cross-post and many others. There are a bunch of issues I'm aware of which need to be communicated clearly and widely: * A lot of activities need updating. There are a good number of us who can help, if we can get the attention of the original / most recent maintainers/authors. We would be willing to do new releases, and we will do so (technically forking) without their help if we don't get their attention. * There is a new activity updater in the control panel in joyride. There is a certain procedure to provide specific versions of the activity for specific builds, so that (future) stable builds get a certain version available, whereas development builds can get other versions of the activity. The exact procedures around that need to be communicated, in such a way that a significant number of activity developers *do* them. * It would be great to have a specific procedure for someone to say I developed this activity, I don't have time to maintain it against future releases, it's available for someone to take over. I suspect several interesting activities are in this position. * We need a way to communicate API changes, new resources, etc to activity developers without this getting lost in the noise of the existing lists. We need a way to get clear feedback on these without getting swamped by non activity developers. * We need to make it easier for new activity developers to get up to speed without having to wade through information they don't need. I am happy to take on making this communication happen but I really think we need this list. I know it's yet another mailing list, but I think it will help make our communication more focussed and effective. I'm adding this to the agenda of today's (tonight's for me) Sugar development meeting. Please comment here in advance of the meeting, or come to the meeting for a more immediate discussion. Morgan We didn't get to discuss this activity developers' mailing list at the Sugar meetings. However I've had no negative feedback. If anyone is opposed to this list, please speak up quickly and loudly. Otherwise I will get it created in the next week, publicize it and invite all known activity developers whose email addresses I can track down to subscribe. My only question is whether this should be @lists.laptop.org or @lists.sugarlabs.org. Please comment, or I will make it the latter by default. Regards Morgan ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
My only question is whether this should be @lists.laptop.org or @lists.sugarlabs.org. Please comment, or I will make it the latter by default. I think the latter makes sense, activities are meant to work with Sugar and not the XO in particular. Shikhar ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
[sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 04:42, Bastien [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Any follow-up on the idea of having a precise list of maintainers for all Sugar activities? Even just the email address from the git repo would be nice. I've raised the idea a couple of times to have a mailing list specifically for activity developers, which would be uncluttered by all the traffic on the devel and even sugar lists. That would hopefully have the result that people stay subscribed, or at least notice mails which are important to them. Currently, I'm not even sure which list out of devel and sugar is going to reach more activity developers, hence this cross-post and many others. There are a bunch of issues I'm aware of which need to be communicated clearly and widely: * A lot of activities need updating. There are a good number of us who can help, if we can get the attention of the original / most recent maintainers/authors. We would be willing to do new releases, and we will do so (technically forking) without their help if we don't get their attention. * There is a new activity updater in the control panel in joyride. There is a certain procedure to provide specific versions of the activity for specific builds, so that (future) stable builds get a certain version available, whereas development builds can get other versions of the activity. The exact procedures around that need to be communicated, in such a way that a significant number of activity developers *do* them. * It would be great to have a specific procedure for someone to say I developed this activity, I don't have time to maintain it against future releases, it's available for someone to take over. I suspect several interesting activities are in this position. * We need a way to communicate API changes, new resources, etc to activity developers without this getting lost in the noise of the existing lists. We need a way to get clear feedback on these without getting swamped by non activity developers. * We need to make it easier for new activity developers to get up to speed without having to wade through information they don't need. I am happy to take on making this communication happen but I really think we need this list. I know it's yet another mailing list, but I think it will help make our communication more focussed and effective. I'm adding this to the agenda of today's (tonight's for me) Sugar development meeting. Please comment here in advance of the meeting, or come to the meeting for a more immediate discussion. Morgan ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
Re: [sugar] Proposal: Activity developers mailing list
On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 11:47:56AM +0200, Morgan Collett wrote: On Thu, Jul 31, 2008 at 04:42, Bastien [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Any follow-up on the idea of having a precise list of maintainers for all Sugar activities? Even just the email address from the git repo would be nice. [...] * We need to make it easier for new activity developers to get up to speed without having to wade through information they don't need. I am happy to take on making this communication happen but I really think we need this list. I think this is a good idea too, especially given that you're motivated to do it. Morgan Martin PS - I'd say +1 but please remember http://kernelslacker.livejournal.com/125203.html pgptTEihPTtdG.pgp Description: PGP signature ___ Sugar mailing list Sugar@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/sugar
