Hi, I hope I'm not intruding into this subject, but I just want to share some of my experience and opinions on this subject. I'm a bit in the same position as Raster but on the aMSN project, usually everything goes by me as I'm the leader of the team, and I always try to avoid getting in discutions like this one (I avoid saying "I decide" but try to say "what do you think?"). and it is a very difficult job/responsability.
Now I can agree with Jose, but I also disagree. Yes, getting the community more involved is a good thing, but is it always easy? I think that having a leader to make decisions is very important, otherwise, you will waste tons of times trying to find a common ground between two people, and the more people get involved, the worse it becomes. Let me take the git/cvs example. CVS is good/bad whatever, I used it for a long time, and I'm more than happy that I don't need to use it anymore (apart from 'cvs update' on E). We moved to SVN a while ago and we're very satisfied with it. I got some experience now with darcs and had a very small peek at git, and I don't like it very much. It's good, but it's so different, I don't see what's the gain when you're already used to something that's working. Now that's my opinion on the matter. I would love to see E get out of CVS, but I would rather vote for SVN than git, but git would be fine too. Now, take the whole lot of people developing on E, not everyone will agree that moving to git is the right choice. When the debate is opened, it can go on forever, literally, unless someone steps up and takes a decision. Remember, the world has agreed on one thing : disagree with each other. No matter what, there will always be someone unhappy. I don't know you, so I can't tell, but I'm guessing you're pissed at Raster because the decisions he makes are usually not the ones you want, so you feel kind of opressed by his leadership. Understandable, and maybe if you were to lead, things would have gone a different path, maybe a better path, maybe worse, noone will ever know. But whatever the case, one fact remains : someone HAS TO lead, someone HAS TO take decisions and people will NOT always be happy. Back to the aMSN project, we *often* get into that kind of situation, and then I have to force a decision to shut people's mouths and close a debate that was going on forever, we do waste a lot of time debating though. Usually what we also do is a poll, everyone exposes their point of view, yes/no/why trying to convince the other developers why they think solution X is better than Y, then we vote by email. Finally, the most used solution is "stop talking about it, we waste so much time talking about something and we never do anything at the end, so just go for it, code it, and prove +to me that you are right *through your code/the end result*" So here's the thing, communication is the key, think about the community.. get it more involved, someone wants to make evas do 3D and have a 3D desktop like beryl/compiz, that's what the community says.. well, should it be done ? how will it impact on the release deadline we're trying to set, will it break stuff, how much time will it take, is it *necessary*? I'm guessing Raster is trying to think of all possible stuff and see how it fits into his own vision of E, if it doesn't, then it shouldn't become part of E because it will handicap the whole thing. But also, what I like about E is that it's modular, so you can pretty much do whatever you want and put it as a module to extend the functionality of E. I think that the very fact that E was designed with this modular purpose is what makes E embracing the community. Think about it, I want something, and I use KDE (I don't), it would be a mess to try to get the KDE people to add the feature I want and provide an option to enable/disable it, etc.. with E, I think that it doesn't have to go like this. I chose the EFL exactly because of this, because on IRC, I kept reading "patches accepted", because I fixed some stuff and my changes went into CVS a few hours after I sent them. Because the other libs/toolkits have their limitations, and I don't want my product to be stuf with those limitations, while the EFL also has its limitations, I know that I will not be stuck with them, I can change them. Example, GTK doesn't support a semi-transparent background on a text widget.. if I choose GTK, I'm stuck with that, and I don't even want to try to get the GTK team to change that just for me. In EFL, I can't get embeded images in a text widget, I don't mind, I can always fix it and remove that limitation (btw, that limitation really sucks since it will cripple any IM program trying to use the EFL). Anyways, all this to say that I think that this team is community-oriented, the dynamics are good, and that whether you like it or not, a leader always has to be there. Of course, there are always things that can/should be improved, but I haven't been around here long enough to know about the status of that in the E development team (which I'm not even part of), so I can't judge or say whether Raster is doing a good job or not. So that was my opinion and rambling, and sorry if I wasted your time by misunderstanding this whole thing or saying obvious stuff. KaKaRoTo On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 08:54:19PM +1100, Carsten Haitzler wrote: > On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 07:18:26 GMT "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > babbled: > > > > > Carsten wrote: > > > > I'll keep this short, since I really don't want to prolong > > this sub-thread between us. > > > > > > .... > > > > Busy or not, you've never expressed any interest or support > > > > for seeing this project become a true community one. > > > > > > i have done just he opposite - i have encouraged people to > > > DO THEIR OWN THING. most of the time people come and ask me or > > > .... > > > > > > i now have more time. regardless of tyring to get people to just > > > take things on their own shoulders and do it - tonnes of things > > > just end up back in my lap. i have retracted what it is i do to > > > a small subset of whats in EFL and CVS. i ignore everything else > > > and let others handle that. > > > > > Ummm. > > > > > but community does NOT mean everything goes through me. i am a > > > single point of failure. i want people to stand up and be leaders > > > on their own - stand on their own 2 feet and be counted. > > > > Exactly. And for that, you can't really have ONE person > > who has basically ALL decision making authority. > > > > Some devs just recently brought up the issue of using git > > instead of cvs, and while there were varying points of view on it, > > the bottom line seemed to be that YOU don't want to move things > > to git - not that there was a concensus on that, or that people > > were not going to be responsible, or whatnot. It's that you don't > > want it. > > there were other voices of dissent too. not just me. it looked like a split. > git just changes a lot about the way we work. it's a stupid idea to do it > right > now anyway - if you read my comments i said "no way we are changing SCM before > e17 is out - or we just will sink more months into adjusting to a new one". i > asked about how git will address the cvs commits list and other issues. i even > said "once e17 is out i had planned a cleanup o the tree - and we can re-visit > the issue there". its an open issue and i have said that i think its bets to > happen LATER. i also said that i am dubious of the changes and their > usefulness > - along with several other long-time e developers. so don't put this on my > shoulders just because i disagree. > > > Why would anyone even contemplate doing anything that you > > might not want? > > because the world isn't all about everyone nicely agreeing to do anything you > like. you need to disagree and say no when you do disagree. i disagree. if > every time you disagree you simply lie and say "great idea - do it" everything > may as well stop. no one is expressing their opinion, just being a bunch of > "yes" men. > > > I have the feeling that you and I have two radically different > > notions of what a "community" means, and I guess we'll just have to > > leave it at that. > > community can work on hat they want. if they wish to impose THEIR desired > changes on EVERYONE - those who wrote the code to star, or have been working > for a long time or keep working - you need to all agree - and really agree, > not > just pretend to agree for the sake of "harmony". > > as i said - this is NOT the right time to go change SCM's. unless you want to > postpone things for more months. the time is after we release e17 and friends. > i believe gustavo already agreed this probably is a good idea (on irc). > > so what you want is me to simply say "yes yes - do whatever you want" > irrespective of the fact that michael disagrees, nathan disagrees, brian > disagrees, dan disagrees - all of them disagreed long before i said anything. > are these people NOT members of the community? does their voice NOT count just > because i also agree with them? > > this is a debate. i still see nothing that says we absolutely must drop > everything and use git now because we will be so disadvantaged in getting e17 > out the door unless we do that. all *I* see is how long other projects have > spent moving to git, and going with the tried and tested "if it ain't broke, > don't fix it" model - cvs ain't broke. it's not our core "product" so its just > a tool to get stuff done. if ti works - it works. it may not be perfect, but > it > works and has worked for a decade for us. shall we throw away a decade of > experience at the drop of a hat "just before release"? (don't read anything in > to that!!!!)? > > -- > ------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" -------------- > The Rasterman (Carsten Haitzler) [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. > Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. > Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. > Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ > _______________________________________________ > enlightenment-devel mailing list > enlightenment-devel@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ enlightenment-devel mailing list enlightenment-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/enlightenment-devel
