On Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:19:33 +0200, Michael Haberler wrote: > Am 20.10.2011 um 20:20 schrieb Kirk Wallace: > >> On Wed, 2011-10-19 at 21:24 +0200, Michael Haberler wrote: >> >> A few years back, I made a comment on how it seemed impossible to >> get >> more than one person to collaborate on a shared goal. After prodding >> a >> bit, I seem to recall the response I got was that each developer >> preferred to work pretty much alone. I'd prefer to see more >> structure to >> the project, but then I suppose that might take many people out of >> their >> comfort zone and that is what a day job is for. It's a bit unnerving >> to >> think that if a relatively few people decided that EMC2 wasn't fun >> anymore, I could find myself with a shop full of CNC machines that >> won't >> work, but it is what it is. > > This reflects my perception 1:1. > > But this is too important a point to discuss on the subject 'spindle > orient > support'.
Maybe things have changed since I bumped heads with a a couple of people on the list and exited stage left, but at that time I was told something that is relevant to this discussion. I would also be very interested to see if the situation has changed any at all... Look at the commit logs, take a survey, and figure out how many people are really developing/maintaining the code and how many hours a month they realistically commit in doing so. You might learn something rather interesting. Back about 5 years ago there was only 4 programmers which consistently spent more than 10 hrs/month on software development, maintenance, or even machine configuration. Most people just take EMC get it working for their setup (even if they are selling machines) and plod along making parts "using" EMC without actively working "on" EMC. Maybe that has changed, but I seriously doubt it. As a result of this several interesting things happened in the community -- when someone suggested a non-trivial change there was a small number of very vocal members that would shout "DON'T TOUCH IT". Why? Well, it took them years of working a few hours here and there to get things limping along as well as it was and were afraid that these major changes would 1) break it and it would take them YEARS of personal pain to get things working again as well as it was for them today, 2) steal away what little brain power there was in the community to some new shiny thing, and 3) would set up yet another branch that they feel they would have to support/maintain and would again suck away what little brain power they had working on things... I should also say that at the time I had someone actually offer to pay me to work on EMC. So, even offering to throw money at the problem is not good enough. So, where does that leave us today? Well I am not entirely sure, but it does not appear to have changed all that much. So if you want to make any major changes you need to just jump in and do it yourself as it is unlikely that you will get the attention of the guy that has all of 1 hr/night to work on his pet projects, and work on yours. Unfortunately that means you need to fork EMC. If you come up with some new and wonderful way to slice bread, then bring it back to the community and see if they would be willing to incorporate it into the standard base. Frankly it is more likely for you to start an EMC competitor which addresses the issues from a clean design than to get the community as a whole to sign off on it. You just have to understand who the real players, who are the vocal nay sayers, and why there is such resistance to all but minor incremental change. EBo -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The demand for IT networking professionals continues to grow, and the demand for specialized networking skills is growing even more rapidly. Take a complimentary Learning@Cisco Self-Assessment and learn about Cisco certifications, training, and career opportunities. http://p.sf.net/sfu/cisco-dev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-developers mailing list Emc-developers@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-developers
