Peter,
I don't have a lot of time on my hands but your posts does beg for an
answer.
Organizing Open Source development is the tougher thing I have ever done.
Forget development of the kernel (even though that is no walk in the park
either).
I am now in a "management" position where I usually work 15h a day, just
talking to people and trying to organize stuff. Communication on the
website, organization of the new doco, 2.1 stabilization, lawyer papers,
possible deals, recruitment of new members, board communication, news,
patches, egos it is all a big pot of "stuff" that I need to do.
It is so bad, that I really burned out in december, i had to take a week off
because there is a price to pay to try and make sense of the whole thing.
IT is MUCH worse now, for SOME reason the whole thing exploded and I have
1138 unread mails on jboss-user (serious). Not only that but I have
invested $100k of my own money to make it work (and much more from my
father in ex-Telkel). That money is gone and it adds to my stress and
"Todo" list.
I am still running with it as much as I can, and frankly I grow accustomed
to the pressure the thousand of little things as well as "long term"
development that needs to happen.
I invite you to step in my shoes for a second, and sit in front of the
"management console" and see how long you can take it. Can you Keep the
Kernel in your mind and Keep the organization going. It is a bit like air
traffic control.
So how does it work? well I understand that OSS is a "Beehive" people come
and go, I get about 2-3 "I want to help " messages *per-day* of these maybe
5% really stay on. Should I make more efforts to bring that number up? I
could. But what I am really looking for is "self maintaince" as an OSS
quality, persistence is another one. I recognized "good faith", gave you a
rw passwd if I remember correctly (we give many of these these days), and
basically told you "Tu te demerdes t'es legionnaire" (french saying that
says "Find your way out of this hell, You are a foreign legionnaire now").
If you felt you were not assisted enough, I am sorry to hear it and I am
curious to know what would help, since we DO need to have more people
staying around than 5%.
BUT UNDERSTAND MY POSITION, I need to find "self maintaining" (IE SCALABLE)
ways of managing that crazy beehive, we are creating something new as I
believe we are outgrowing the "linux model" (modular is NOT enough). No
modular is not enough, obviously we need more following, more management,
more "TODO" lists, more "STATUS" lists, more "HELP NEEDED" lists, etc etc.
The final point on "make noise and you will be heard" well yes, until you
make too much noise. But "el que no llora no mama" (spanish saying that
goes "he who doesn't cry doesn't get to breast feed"). I am a mama with
many many cubs... I don't mean to hurt ANYBODY's feelings, really. You came
in good faith, you got fed up for lack of following, help me find "scalable"
ways to follow you...
ok?
marc
|-----Original Message-----
|From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
|[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Peter Shillan
|Sent: Friday, February 02, 2001 2:49 AM
|To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
|Subject: RE: [jBoss-Dev] <sigh> any response PLEASE?
|
|
|Hi Guys,
|
|This is the first thing I've written for a *long* time, but this
|thread has
|inspired me to commit something... :-D
|
|I tried to get involved in jBoss a long time ago. To protect the
|innocent I
|won't name names or teams, but here is (roughly) what happened:
|
|1) I asked to participate and was gladly accepted.
|
|2) I was assigned to a couple of teams but given no other instructions.
|
|3) I had a couple of E-Mails between the other guys, but these stopped
|fairly quickly.
|
|4) I asked what I should do and got told to just 'follow along'.
|The problem
|with this of course was that no one told me there was a mailing
|list for the
|tasks I needed to put my name on and it was not made clear in any
|other way.
|
|5) No one contacted me to find out if I was dead or alive and I
|didn't know
|what was going on.
|
|6) I got fed up and stopped trying to find out.
|
|7) I saw the tasks I was meant to be working on were finished.
|
|Now I am new to all this open-source and I'm perfectly prepared to accept
|that much of this was or could have been my fault. The question
|is, though,
|that no one really wanted to help me get into it and no one was
|prepared to
|try to extend a hand. I am a good programmer and love jBoss and the
|principles behind it. I would love to have been involved and cut
|some of the
|code.
|
|Since someone began talking about attitude, perhaps someone can
|explain the
|attitude of people who should be doing everything reasonable to encourage,
|welcome and help people - pointing them in the right direction. I realise
|this takes time, but if it's a time you are not prepared to spend, you are
|in the wrong role. I also have experience of E-Mails to the list going
|un-answered until something more... shall we say... *direct* was written.
|
|Let's not get bitchy... we are professionals. All I'm saying is that you
|could get a lot more help to write the thing if the atmosphere was
|a little
|more supportive and embracing, in my own opinion.
|
|Peter Shillan.
|_________________________________________________________________________
|Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
|
|
