Gentle persons: Random thoughts on a Sunday morning---
Reading these recent emails, I am reminded of the timeless quote from Pogo "we have met the enemy and he is us." There is no "them" to develop EMC2, it is only us. Even in the original EMC project, there was never an army of developers, only a few permanent staff members at NIST who also had other duties. They were augmented by some "now you see them, now you don't" summer interns and industrial associates. The EMC project was a small part of a much broader standards-based, factory-automation effort. Read, for example, "Use of Open Source Distribution for a Machine Tool Controller" by WIll Shackleford and Fred Proctor, http://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/documents/shackleford/4191_05.pdf, to get a feel for why EMC exists at all and how it got turned over to "us." That EMC2 continues to have a handful of loyal developers roughly a decade after the first discussions about going open source is par for the course with such highly technical projects for such a niche user base. Some familiar names have faded away and some new ones have emerged but I don't expect the numbers ever greatly to expand. In discussing the future of EMC, why not use the "future of EMC" section of the wiki? That's what it is for. The benefits including allowing a more orderly exposition and preservation of ideas so they don't sink into the email archive. With a little effort, the wiki can become a living manifesto. In considering the future of EMC, don't forget to read the records of past meetings and the charge to the board of directors that are captured in the same section of the wiki. (It seems to me this charge is a great list of things to do; perhaps a reaffirmation of this charge is due.) Voltaire wrote (approximately) "the perfect is the enemy of the good." It would seem to me that for some thousand or so users*, EMC2 is good. If it weren't so, we'd be hearing a lot more about it. This counts as a success in my book. Want the "silent" body of EMC2 users to clamor for something better? Well, I spent 30 years writing project and program proposals for activities projected to last from 1 to 5 years and to require anywhere from 1/2 to 50 man years of effort. (Like a utility baseball player, I batted roughly 0.250. I never hit a "home run" but I was good enough to keep my group fully occupied every one of those years.) Every one of these proposals could be reduced to a few sentences: what's the problem? what do we propose to do about it? what will be the impact of the result? how will the results be deployed? who will benefit? what is the consequence of doing nothing**? Lay on, Macduff. Regards, Kent *I take the numbers reported by the user survey on the website with a grain of salt; I can imagine reasons why the number of actual users is either larger or smaller, but I'm not losing any sleep over it. Artsoft claims 10000 users of MACH. I take their number with a grain of salt as well. Besides, the comments posted in various forums and email lists suggest their world is no bed of roses either. **As an aside, it seems to me there are three major activities involved in keeping EMC2 alive: 1) repairing errors in existing EMC2 code so expected functionality works as intended, 2) changing/extending EMC2 code to add new functionality, and 3) keeping EMC2 code consistent with Linux and RTAI as they change with the times. To me, the biggest negative consequence of doing nothing is a result, not of 1) or 2), but of 3). Many open-source products I've used in the past have fallen into disuse because they don't work with the current system libraries, compilers, kernel, etc. Keeping old versions of the LiveCD around helps but is an imperfect solution because some of the changes in Linux/RTAI are forced by changes in computer hardware. New users often don't have the collection of old computers I have :-) As well, surprisingly few seem interested in dedicating a platform solely to machine control. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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
