Re: [Emc-users] [Emc-developers] Open letter to the EMC Board of Directors
2012/1/23 Michael Haberler mai...@mah.priv.at: What I do blame you for, and what I take issue with, is the style and attitude in which you have come to, and implemented your decision, which is symptomatic for how the EMC2 project is run, and what is wrong with it from a steering perspective: After years of inactivity, complete silence on current and future issues, and the complete failure to drive any meaningful planning and strategy discussion, leave along seeing through results of such plans, not only myself have come to the conclusion that as an entity the board either does not exist, is completely defunct, or an old boys club which does not perceive the need to communicate beyond their inner circle and basically focuses on private coding interests. However, I remind you that a board is primarily a social function: steering, driving and moderating discussion and goal setting, summarizing results, check whether goals have been attained, and taking corrective action if not. I also encourage the community at large to consider a board's role, and spell out their expectations - it is unfair to blame somebody for failing to meet goals which are not clearly spelled out. - Michael btw: what are the intended board terms of service? I pretty much agree to everything Michael and others have expressed about the (lack of) steering for LinuxCNC, I have been thinking about it from time to time. I especially felt it, when I tried to add linear joints to genserkins and was repeatedly asking for some assistance in debugging it, but did not get response. I think that whole project would benefit from fixing that and making genserkins truly general kinematics module for any kind of serially connected joints. I was also thinking, what to do about this whole situation. I looked here: http://www.linuxcnc.org/index.php/english/about/12?task=view Few things I noticed: 1) the goal/duties/role of the Board is not mentioned; It has been metioned several times that Board should set the direction - determine, which features/issues are considered as important and are encouraged to pay more attention, what things are considered as less important and what things are considered as not acceptable for the project; probably there is something else; 2) there is nothing about the procedure, how Board would provide some feedback to users; I find it crucial, because users are the ones to elect Board members, so it seems obvious to me that there would be some feedback from Board to users. It could be something like quarterly published list of decisions/voting since last report (pretty much like changelog in each new release); I do not think that we should introduce Council as an institution to follow up on Board's activities, but I do believe that there should be implemented a feedback mechanism, otherwise we have situation that there are users (me among them) that have almost no clue what does the Board do; 3) I think that there should be separate procedure for critical-impact decisions; IMHO this issue with EMC Corp. is very nice example - what I understand from the discussions so far is that community would prefer at least receiving information about such situations. I do not think that community should necessarily get involved in decision making, buaccepted byt giving users a chance to share their insights might provide useful information to Board which in turn would result in better decisions and, more importantly, better acceptance by community than in this case; What I would like to ask - if anyone has a proposal/suggestion for any of these 3 points, share them either in mailing list or in private. I am volunteering to summarize it all. Viesturs -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] [Emc-developers] Open letter to the EMC Board of Directors
On 25 January 2012 20:53, s...@highlab.com s...@highlab.com wrote: People are saying thing like: What's the road map of features for future releases? What features should/shouldn't I work on? These kinds of questions make no sense in my mental model of the project. I see your point, but that does leave a bit of a problem. Currently I can have a great idea for a modification to LinuxCNC. I can spend months working on it to get it to the point where it can be demonstrated. Then somebody can say Oh, we rejected that idea back in 2005 because it's stupid. There surely has to be _some_ way of figuring out whether a feature or change is likely to be accepted into the main branch prior to spending a bunch of time coding it. It's no big deal if it is a feature that you want personally, you get to keep it. But much of the stuff I have done I have no intention of ever using, I just think it would be nice for the project if it worked. -- atp The idea that there is no such thing as objective truth is, quite simply, wrong. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] [Emc-developers] Open letter to the EMC Board of Directors
On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 09:07:14PM +, andy pugh wrote: I see your point, but that does leave a bit of a problem. Currently I can have a great idea for a modification to LinuxCNC. I can spend months working on it to get it to the point where it can be demonstrated. Then somebody can say Oh, we rejected that idea back in 2005 because it's stupid. There surely has to be _some_ way of figuring out whether a feature or change is likely to be accepted into the main branch prior to spending a bunch of time coding it. The way I see it, you just do this by discussing it with other developers and perhaps the whole community. People do this on irc and the mailing list all the time. You know that sticking points will be stuff like breaking existing configs, breaking existing gcode programs, changing existing behavior that a lot of people use, etc. You can use these metrics to figure out how much impact your change will have. Realistically, then, you as a developer will have some idea whether the idea will be controversial or will be a slam dunk. You use this judgement to determine how much buy-in/advocacy/discussion is needed before you spend too much time on it. -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] [Emc-developers] Open letter to the EMC Board of Directors
On 23 January 2012 21:46, Chris Morley chrisinnana...@hotmail.com wrote: I will add my voice at least so Michael knows he is not the only one who feels this way. And I. It seems almost impossible to get any idea what ideas are worth developing, or which direction to go. It is very difficult to commit to doing any work on anything if you have no idea if it will be accepted. Not that things ever get rejected, they just get ignored indefinitely. Perhaps one place to start would be a List and an Antilist, the former of things that are known to be in need of improvement, and the latter of things that are thought to be the wrong direction for EMC2. -- atp The idea that there is no such thing as objective truth is, quite simply, wrong. -- Try before you buy = See our experts in action! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-dev2 ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
Re: [Emc-users] [Emc-developers] Open letter to the EMC Board of Directors
On Mon, 23 Jan 2012 22:17:17 +, you wrote: On 23 January 2012 21:46, Chris Morley chrisinnana...@hotmail.com wrote: I will add my voice at least so Michael knows he is not the only one who feels this way. And I. It seems almost impossible to get any idea what ideas are worth developing, or which direction to go. It is very difficult to commit to doing any work on anything if you have no idea if it will be accepted. Not that things ever get rejected, they just get ignored indefinitely. Precisely... Steve Blackmore -- -- Keep Your Developer Skills Current with LearnDevNow! The most comprehensive online learning library for Microsoft developers is just $99.99! Visual Studio, SharePoint, SQL - plus HTML5, CSS3, MVC3, Metro Style Apps, more. Free future releases when you subscribe now! http://p.sf.net/sfu/learndevnow-d2d ___ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
