On May 3, 2011, at 8:14 AM, Jacques Le Roux wrote: > Hi David, > > First I appreciate you took the time to put your thoughts on the table. I'm > not sure an answer was waited, but here we go. > > From: "David E Jones" <d...@me.com> >> Jacques, I hate to say it, but perhaps the reason is you often don't review >> and push back hard enough on contributions. This >> results in a higher than desirable rate of problematic contributions making >> it into the project, but certainly results in a more >> personable and agreeable human interaction. > > Of course, as I committed far more patches than every one else, I understand > you choose me to explain your position. I did that not > much because I enjoy personable and agreeable human interaction (which is > true), but because I saw that most of contributions were > neglicted. In some case, maybe there were good reasons. But I'm not even sure > of that, because there were any feedbacks in some Jira > issue which were very valuable and well done, especially in the deeper > framework parts. I believe that if a contributor makes the > effort to upload a patch and explain it, it's worth to at least look at it an > give an opinion. I also understand that if you have > not enough time to do it well, then it's better to wait or do nothing. I was > able to do that sometimes... Finally I must say that > some patches I committed were very valuable, some less, some should even not > have been committed (or not in the state they were). I > can agree with that.
First Jacques, thank you for your significant efforts in getting patches committed. I agree this is an important part of the project, and for a community-driven model it is a vital part of how things happen. Your assessment of your actions sounds pretty spot on, and it's good to hear you recognize both the good and bad of your efforts. As you mentioned elsewhere in your message, I think the answer is yes... some contributions should absolutely be neglected. >> I used to think it was easier to get someone else to do things than to do >> things myself. For complicated things, I don't think so >> any more. It's easier, more peaceful, more satisfying, and even more >> rewarding to just do it myself. If others want to get >> involved, they need to demonstrate a high level of competence and >> significant added value, otherwise they are wasting both my time >> and theirs (ie they should go do something they are good at and stop trying >> to do something they are not good at; or if it is just >> a problem of experience they should go acquire that experience (perhaps in >> an open source project of their own, or at least >> something that requires less expertise) and then contribute instead of >> acquiring that experience as they contribute). > > This is certainly true (for complicated things). And was actually how you > handled it before the Apache era. I understand it's hard > to do it another way, maybe we should have keep the same way it was done > before the Apache era. When it's only small changes (some > very important) it's possible to follow the flow, when a lot of changes are > committed a the same time it's above human capabilities. >From the very beginning my goal was to grow a community around OFBiz and not >do everything myself. There were more committers added to the project in the >pre-ASF era than in the post-ASF era, and in fact most of the current >committers and nearly all of the current PMC were committers on OFBiz before >the project moved into the ASF. Very early on there were certainly less committers, but that was just because I wasn't as successful at recruiting at the time... partly because the project took a little while to build and until it got to a certain point not so many people were interested in seriously getting involved. It is true that as a percentage of commits in the overall pre-ASF era was largely due to Andrew and me, and after largely from others. However, I think that is more of a community maturity factor and not due to the move to the ASF. In the last year before the ASF move much of this shift had already occurred, which actually made things a bit harder because there were contributions to OFBiz from SO many people and we had to get CLAs from each person (or delete or redo their code). >> Is that harsh and rude? Yep. Do I care any more? Nope. Those who call it >> harsh or rude or unfair... they are the ones who need to >> rise to the level of quality expected instead of asking me to compromise. >> I'm done with that. > > Yes maybe a more hierarchised organisation is better to reach some goals. > This needs to be verified... Goal is the important word > here... I'm not interested in an hierarchy, ie I don't want anyone "under" me that I'm responsible for and have to boss around. Even Moqui is an unpaid volunteer effort, just more tightly controlled and the meritocracy bar is intentionally set higher. I don't know that OFBiz would do better as an hierarchy, my opinion is that more "free market" forces are needed and to me that means multiple competing projects. The lack of desire to work on things that you mentioned relates to this. If you had your own vision and efforts for a certain part of the OFBiz ecosystem, you could push that along and feel satisfied and enjoy working on it. If it was in a separate project you would be able to try out new ideas and prove or disprove them without so much of a peanut gallery, and without having to vote or come to a consensus (or try to get a lazy consensus by committing quietly). It is now my opinion that various separate projects would produce a better community (considering the composite community of all of the projects), happier contributors, and better software. Perhaps even for you Jacques a more distributed ecosystem of projects might even be better. If you could work on anything you wanted, what would it be? What is your greatest strength and area of experience and could a project based on that exist (perhaps working with others, if you want)? -David
