Ean Schuessler wrote:
On Tuesday 11 September 2007 03:22:24 am David E Jones wrote:
Ummm... not sure where this idea came from...
Neither "David" nor "Undersun" (now part of Hotwax Media) nor any other
person or organization are some central source of resources or driving
force for the project. OFBiz is overseen by a PMC (project management
committee) but everything that goes into OFBiz is contributed by users.
So no, this would never work. There is no central organization to pull
stuff into the project, just users to push stuff into the project. That's
the WHOLE point of a community driven project that facilitates
collaboration.
Of course, this is also impossible with current forks like opentaps and
Neogia because they specifically structure their licensing and copyright
ownership so that it is impossible to bring the contributions back into
OFBiz.
[snip]
I don't think people understand just how incorrect and harmful to the
project this sort of thought is. If it isn't community driven people and
organizations won't be as interested in contributing and the whole project
will fall apart. It's a vicious and damaging lie! For anyone thinking this
please check your facts and motives!
Don't be so defensive! There is a big difference between a vicious lie and a
widespread misconception. Hotwax has more committers than anyone else so its
easy to see why people might think something like this. If I was a
dangerously motivated liar I would do more than simply state the obvious!
Anyway, my main point was about the benefit of using a more modern and
distributed source management system for things that aren't ready to go into
SVN. Brainfood would rather make extensive changes to our local repository
and pool them up into change sets that go to mainstream. Repeated merges
where portions have been partially applied in multiple paths of development
isn't a workflow that is well supported by SVN but is easy (or way easier,
anyway) under GIT and Mercurial.
ps. Check your facts and motives before calling someone a vicious, damaging
liar.
Now who's being defensive? ;) And what I wrote wasn't even a reply to your
email...
Whatever the case, I stated the lie and then said it was such, I wasn't quoting
from anyone, though I think the reply was to Jonathon and we have a nice long
history and being harsh with each other (again ;) ). It's great to have you
around Jonathon, you bring up lots of good issues in these little high level
threads.
There is some good stuff in what you're saying Ean, and I totally agree that
different people and organizations will find different ways of collaborating
with the community that works best for them. I'm just trying to describe and
encourage (like in the contributors best practices page) the ones that seem to
result in the most contributions coming into the project AND the most benefit
and feedback going back to the contributor.
My perception is definitely limited though, and I know it very well, so for
whatever anyone is doing if it's working well for you then there's no reason to
change. If it's not working so well then I invite people to take a look at
stuff that will help them, but that may not seem so obvious, and may in fact
seem like a waste of time, and that is trying to get as much as possible into
the open source project and collaborating with others in the community as you
do so (well, that's the short/simple version, more verbose in the contributors
best practices page).
-David
