We haven't done a great job of keeping OpenCog friendly and usable as a general opensource tool for the world at large, nor at making it approachable to developers outside our close community...
Pretty much, a close group of people have been using OpenCog for various applications and contributing to the generic OpenCog codebase along the way.... The code has been kept open source and some effort has been made to keep the code documented and to keep a wiki up to date, but the project hasn't really been run or maintained in a way oriented toward fostering a developer community.... This has not been due to a lack of interest in fostering a developer community, but just due to the core people involved being perennially swamped with other stuff... Indeed, nobody has been actively managing OpenCog as a general OSS project. Folks have been maintaining the codebase and repos (Linas, Amen, Nil, etc.) but some mess has been tolerated there so long as it doesn't stop our applications from working... I'm certainly not opposed to project management in general -- e.g. we have just hired a new software project manager for Hanson Robotics; and my new SingularityNET project has pretty structured project management. It's just a fact that so far there has not been funding to hire a good project manager for OpenCog as a general OSS project, and nobody with the right mindset and skillset has emerged to do this on a volunteer basis (and it's not a very easy job)... -- ben On Sat, Oct 7, 2017 at 12:34 PM, Mark Waser <mark.wa...@gmail.com> wrote: > So . . . . let me weigh in . . . . > > > > I’ve been a professional developer for 37+ years and am constantly using > open source software for both work and personal endeavors. > > > > The *worst* thing for me is when the publicly available repo cannot be > immediately compiled and run due to missing/incomplete instructions or > errors. > > > > While this is nearly unavoidable once in a blue moon, it is certainly > unacceptable when it happens on a regular basis. It shows an incredible > lack of professionalism -- much less a tremendous lack of respect for the > time and effort of others. At work, it is a termination offense. > > > > I’ve read this mailing list for years. It seems that the repo being broken > is far, far more common than not. > > > > The fact that the project has so many moving pieces is seriously daunting. > The fact that you can’t even start analyzing it without repairing it is a > total non-starter for me – and I suspect, most others, particularly > professionals who *know* how software projects must be run to ensure > progress and success. > > > > I had great hopes for OpenCog once – but I seems that it has done nothing > but spin in circles except for a few (outstanding) one-programmer pieces > (that haven’t picked up the traction they deserve because they’ve been > anchored down by the rest). I don’t see that changing without a serious > upgrade in the engineering management of the project. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "opencog" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to opencog+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to opencog@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/opencog. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/opencog/000001d33f68%248e9bf310%24abd3d930%24%40gmail.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- Ben Goertzel, PhD http://goertzel.org "I am God! I am nothing, I'm play, I am freedom, I am life. I am the boundary, I am the peak." -- Alexander Scriabin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "opencog" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to opencog+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to opencog@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/opencog. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/opencog/CACYTDBdOSGCK9R-Oh9DqY%3Dca2ADevW3i5_%2ByZHnAYD93jGjWXQ%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
