Changing the topic line to something more descriptive. Hope nobody minds. >>> I only recommend the OpenVPN project manager to hold with this solution, >>> and manage a proper design process, there are people here who can help, if >>> the process is managed correctly. >> Alon, there is a process. It's just different from what you imagine it to be. >> If you're not keen to get on IRC then read the chat log that gets posted here >> the next day and comment on it. Comment and counter-propose on patches - as >> you do - and this project will go forward. > I disagree, open source project is not different than any other > software project. > when you reach to the point of writing code (hence patches), it is way > too late to > discuss requirements and design. And the emotional impact of rejecting people > work at this stage is huge, especially when these involves in great effort. I agree. That said, the same applies to the buildsystem work you did: the requirements were vague and there was a lack of design discussion. Therefore the emotional impact on other developers was identical.
So, in the future, we all should put our major new ideas on the table (=this mailing list) to a) figure out the requirements b) discuss design After this we can move on to the implementation more safely, without excluding anyone. I think the early negative comments on some of your buildsystem patches were indirectly caused by lack of a) and b). Or, in other words, other developers did not see the big picture because it had not been presented to them clearly. Of course, there are occasions when this consensus-process gets us nowhere due to arguing. In those cases somebody just needs to move on to implementation to prove the design. This should not happen often, and never without a) and b). > Also please keep in mind we are not being payed for openvpn, nor payed to keep > project alive, we donate our time and our experience. > > If you force people to follow meetings, you may lose experience of people who > might be busy at that specific time in their day work. I also much prefer the mailing list for this reason. The original reason for the IRC meetings was James: he simply didn't have time to read the emails on openvpn-devel and we needed his advise on some things. The problem with timezones and people not being able to attend was known from the beginning, though. That's why the meetings had a specific process: 1) Preliminary topic list is sent to openvpn-devel ml 2) The actual meeting (fully open) 3) The meeting summary + complete chatlog is sent to openvpn-devel ml The idea was to minimize the negative impact of the meetings as much as possible. Also, we haven't had that many meetings in a long while: <https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/IrcMeetings> The dangerous aspect of the IRC is it's more personal nature, and the fact that it's far quicker to get feedback from there than from the mailing list. The problem is that only a subset of developers and community members hang out on the IRC. This is fine, as long as the people on the mailing lists are not excluded from the discussion. This is where we need to be really careful and not get too comfortable on the IRC channel. > Because of this a proper roadmap and design of significant changes should be > published and discussed over time, leveraging the overall experience of the > community. Very good point, again I agree. > > Anyway, I am not managing this project, it is up to him to decide how > to progress. And the decisions should be made so that as few people are excluded as possible. > > However, OpenVPN is already very fat monolithic implementation that grow over > time with a lot of niche features, the code is so complex and > conditional that it > is almost impossible to maintain. It is about time to setup up a direction, > and > maybe work toward modular approach first, solving the Windows major issues > with > as minimal effort as possible for the time being. This is probably long overdue, just as the buildsystem overhaul was. Some plans for OpenVPN 3.0 were made a while ago: <https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/RoadMap> We should probably reopen this discussion once 2.3 (final) is out. -- Samuli Seppänen Community Manager OpenVPN Technologies, Inc irc freenode net: mattock
