Thanks for taking the time to respond and offering the opportunity to discuss this.
So I don't think it's on me to convince you why you shouldn't make a fork release. It's your responsibility to explain why you should. If you don't see this proposed 2.3 release meeting the definition of a fork, I can and will explain myself in more depth below, but I'll just be repeating conventional concepts couched in Exhibit specifics. And while you go to some lengths to describe the scope, content, and intent of this material, I feel I should make clear that my objection is to the act of forking and what its signals. The reasons you give below for testing out your ideas using Exhibit 2 are spot on. Were I in your position and on a timeline, I would have done the same and chosen the existing code base over the one that was just an idea at that time. What I would not have done is make experimental commits to trunk to satisfy external interests. While it is a certainty that this experimenting can lead to great improvements to the code, it is not a certainty that satisfying said external interests also coincides with making a great release. And it's a release based on such commit behavior that I'm objecting to. One of the things I brought up in my last was how your research brings in new and unknown committers to the main development line without any prior community participation. With that in mind - how have the Liverpool group been participating in this open source community? I mentioned that I thought a great number of the features I see coming from the research direction don't belong in core from their outset. Perhaps it would behoove all of us to find some consensus on what core means. What I'm generally advocating for is that these things begin their life as extensions external to the project, making their way in to the Exhibit repository as extensions as the community plays with and develops them, finally making their way into core if the feature grows to such a rate of adoption. My ideal resolution to our differences would be to see a 2.2.1 maintenance-only release and the new features teased out as extensions for the community to poke at and play with. Perhaps one way to sum up our differences is that you'd like to make a release because it's there; I'd prefer you didn't as-is because a lot of what's there shouldn't be there in the first place. On forking. You mention your moving to Exhibit 3.0 can happen when its feature set meets or exceeds Exhibit 2's. Yet you're essentially moving the goalposts with this proposed 2.3 release. This is one essence of forking every developer should rightfully despise. Do you intend for thousands of users to move from 2.2 to 2.3? If not - and I hope you don't - that suggests this proposed 2.3 release is only meant for a small circle of adopters. It doesn't sound like it merits a full, community-wide release. Stranding users on 2.3 to take on a handful of experimental features while 3.0 marches away from them is also a distasteful result of forking. As for not taking any energy away, I think that's contestable, but it's also only looking in one direction to claim that just because it hasn't yet doesn't mean it won't in the future. Groups fork from one another precisely because it does do that. On 2012-02-02 14:45 , David Karger wrote: > You may be surprised that I agree with almost everything you say. > However, there is one sticky fact that drove me onto the path of an > exhibit 2.3 release: Exhibit 2 is a full-featured system in active use > at a couple thousand sites, while Exhibit 3, due to the limits of what > we received funding to accomplish, is an incomplete upgrade that does > not yet meet the needs of the current E2 users. > > As you observe, my proposed 2.3 is a mix of a maintenance and a > "research" release. In the maintenance category we have bugfixes and > the elimination of the painter service dependence in the map view. In > the research category we have logging, embedded data, new input formats, > and data editing. > > The rationale for doing maintenance on E2 is that, as observed above, E3 > is not yet at a point where current E2 users can transition to it. > Because painter has been a longstanding problem point for E2 users, I > judged it worth improving the quality of their current tool. > > In a perfect world, we would have first completed development of E3 to > match E2 capabilities, then added these changes to E3. However, none of > us have the manpower for that, so these needed changes would not have > happened without E2. I judged that the need to have these changes > available *now* trumped the value of shifting all effort to E3. > > As for the research component of the release, most of these changes were > again driven by current users. The data editing extension was actually > created by the Ensemble Project at Liverpool University because they > need it for their application of Exhibit in e-learning (and E3 doesn't > yet have what they need). The XML importer was also a request of the > Ensemble project. Embedded data was a specific response for users who > had problems getting their content indexed when the content was on a > linked page, and also ties to the editable data work of the ensemble > project. Logging is indeed something we inserted for our own research > purposes, but it's literally 10 lines of code, not worth attention. > > In a sense, the existence of E3 reduced my concern about pushing > experimental changes to E2. We know that eventually E3 will overtake E2 > in functionality, and at that point E2 will be decommissioned. E2 > therefore becomes a perfect prototyping environment within which to > test-drive ideas that might someday be incorporated in E3 when it > reaches full functionality. Again, those ideas can't be test-driven in > E3 yet, because E3 isn't complete. > > To your forking objection, that we "split focus and energy" from E3, I > can only observe how tiny our manpower is at MIT. All of my (as opposed > to ensemble's) contributions to E2.3 represent tinkering at the edges > that I was able to carve out of a small amount of "hobby time". My > contribution to E3 would have been negligible in quantity (and probably > negative in quality---as you say, production code is different). > Essentially, 2.3 is the exhibit "research lab" you recommend at the end > of your note. It isn't a fork because it hasn't taken any meaningful > energy from E3. > > I'm happy to continue this discussion, but so far none of the arguments > you've given convince me that there is any negative value in making the > small improvements we've produced available as a new 2.3 release. > > > > On 02/02/2012 05:13 PM, Ryan Lee wrote: >> This is going to be a bit long, so please bear with me. It's important. >> >> I am supportive of a maintenance release to Exhibit 2.2.0 (what is >> currently deployed) where long standing bugs get fixed, libraries >> updated, etc., for those who feel they can't make a switch to 3.0 just >> yet. But this proposed alpha changes semantics and adds features. It >> is essentially a fork release. And forking releases sucks: parallel and >> divergent lines of development get very hard to reconcile, and they >> split focus and energy. >> >> Even so, I'd be happy to take a look at a diff for between June and now >> to see what fixes could be incorporated into Exhibit 3.0. But I'm not >> going to take in changes to the configuration language or other material >> that almost certainly does not belong in the core of Exhibit at all. >> >> Your involvement with Exhibit at the research level is incredibly >> valuable, don't get me wrong there; I think it could be amazing to have >> a constant flow into the Exhibit community of fresh ideas emanating from >> your research group. At the same time, how that's been done to date is >> at direct odds with one of the cornerstones of making an open source >> project successful: gatekeeping for who can get commit access to the >> core trunk. >> >> When any of your students can get in to satisfy your group's >> requirements but others from the wider community need to actively >> demonstrate participation and core competency to receive the same, the >> overall quality of the project is rather more harmed than improved, and >> the community gets unhelpful signals about how exactly they're involved. >> Code that's been generated for research is almost never the same as >> code that's been tested and engineered for production, for many good >> reasons - but the difference is there nonetheless. >> >> Still, I do believe these competing interests both deserve their place >> in the project, and I think they can be reconciled. One of the reasons >> we moved to GitHub was to provide a better social model for working on >> Exhibit. With GitHub, everybody is working on their own personal fork >> for development, even the gatekeepers. It becomes the gatekeepers job >> to merge in any changes as submitted by contributors. This way, anybody >> can participate - subject to review. The best contributors then >> become gatekeepers themselves. Within this model, your students get the >> opportunity to both simply work on code and use it as a proving ground >> for promotion to gatekeeper, if that's at all their interest. >> >> Ideally, Exhibit 3.0 also makes it easier to write code for Exhibit >> without touching its core. I'm sure it could use some refinement with >> experience, but given that that's the direction we're moving in, your >> students could then write extensions to pursue their ideas, and your >> group serve them up as a sort of Exhibit research lab to the community, >> the best features and implementations being adopted into Exhibit over >> time. >> >> This release you propose conflates what is useful in a maintenance >> release with what your group's most recent research focus has been. I >> do not believe the two should be joined together in one release. >> >> The interim between the prior release and the next shows how little of a >> release process we currently have in place as a community, so I suppose >> it feels like fair game to just take individual initiative. There's a >> release proposal to the community coming up soon to address just that >> point. >> >> Nobody is going to force you to stop. But please don't issue a fork >> release. >> >> On 2012-01-24 23:21 , David Karger wrote: >>> This is to announce an alpha release of an update to the Exhibit 2 >>> codebase, one that I hope will eventually become Exhibit version 2.3. As >>> Exhibit 3 matures we aim to shift our developments efforts there, but >>> for the time being the greater maturity of E2 makes it a better testbed >>> for these updates. This release fixes a number of bugs and also offers >>> additional functionality; we'd like to see how that functionality gets >>> used in order to understand what is important to incorporate into E3. >>> >>> These changes are all live on >>> http://trunk.simile-widgets.org/exhibit/api, so all you need to do to >>> try them is link to that API instead of api.simile-widgets.org . Please >>> do so, and provide feedback on what is working and what isn't. >>> >>> Major changes include: >>> >>> * support for new import data formats including xml and html tables >>> * exhibit data can be embedded directly in html documents >>> * map view upgraded to use google maps v3 (gmaps key no longer required) >>> * map view renders icons locally (using canvas) instead of using painter >>> service >>> * a new extension supporting wysiwyg inline editing of data displayed in >>> any exhibit >>> >>> There are also several bug fixes. Details of these and other changes >>> can be found at http://people.csail.mit.edu/karger/Exhibit/alpha.html >>> > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "SIMILE Widgets" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/simile-widgets?hl=en.
