mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
Hello, There was a post on a popular Russian-speaking IT site geektimes.ru authored from an account with an associated full name Ilia Maslakov titled (translated) ms is over!?: http://geektimes.ru/post/250964/ Link to author's account is at the bottom of the article: http://geektimes.ru/users/smind/ , it has 6th position in user's ratings on site, so likely belongs to the person named. The summarized translation is: Lately, a leading developer wrote in developer's conference: andrew_b: I closed bunch of tickets, but that's likely it. All comes to its end. It weren't worst 5 years in my life. mc is currently as briefcase without a handle: pity to drop, pity to carry. I'm tired of all that, I quit. So, mc development history led by our team comes to a milestone. Myself, I haven't done a commit to master in over a year. The post is written in a clear FUD manner, and implies too many far-fetched things, like: that departure of a maintainer means death of the project, that not this list titled mc-devel is where important discussion and announcements happen, but on delevoper's conference where people speak Russian, etc. The current maintainers, namely Andrew Borodin, Slava Zanko, Ilia Maslakov, Sergei Trofimovich - please provide full disclosure of what happens within your team. Whatever it is, please show goodwill by adding Egmont Koblinger to the maintainer team, if he agrees (including discussions and commit access), to show that the project wasn't usurped by Soviet Obkom. Thanks, Paul mailto:pmis...@gmail.com ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 27.05.2015 13:37, Paul Sokolovsky пишет: Hi all, The current maintainers, namely Andrew Borodin, Slava Zanko, Ilia Maslakov, Sergei Trofimovich - please provide full disclosure of what happens within your team. Whatever it is, please show goodwill by adding Egmont Koblinger to the maintainer team, if he agrees (including discussions and commit access), to show that the project wasn't usurped by Soviet Obkom. Yes, I confirm that our team as fact has ended to develop mc. Ilia has issues with access to internet from his work, at home he has much stronger priorities with family, the same for Andrew. As for me, I have heavy loading on work, after work I very busy on building my house. So there is no time for development mc. And of course, we are opened for any of our wishes to develop mc. Just let me know if someone wants to participate in development and I'll give write access to repo/wiki/transifex and I'll do some knowledge transfer about usual workflows (such as: preparing for release, code styling, where our ContinuousIntegration is placed and so on). I hope, mc will rise again with new blood. And I agree with Andrew: It weren't worst 5 years in my life Yeah, it was five happy years for me :) WBR, Slavaz -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 iEYEARECAAYFAlVlotoACgkQb3oGR6aVLpqysACfROPBo1/KrzNu73zwm8kpLTEI QbsAn2Gwet6bDc0FZc4nx4Gphsl4LSTE =QFDk -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
Hi - Although I just signed on to the team to try to work with documentation, mc is one of the most important tools in my box. Therefore, despite the fact that I have very little coding experience on a project like this, I am certainly willing to learn anything necessary to keep mc alive. I want to thank all of you who have worked on mc in the past and let you know that it is an incredibly valuable tool for me and I think for many other people as well. I hope that those of you who are moving on will always know that your contributions are appreciated. We all wish you well and thank you for your work. Thank you! On 05/27/2015 06:56 AM, Slava Zanko wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 27.05.2015 13:37, Paul Sokolovsky пишет: Hi all, The current maintainers, namely Andrew Borodin, Slava Zanko, Ilia Maslakov, Sergei Trofimovich - please provide full disclosure of what happens within your team. Whatever it is, please show goodwill by adding Egmont Koblinger to the maintainer team, if he agrees (including discussions and commit access), to show that the project wasn't usurped by Soviet Obkom. Yes, I confirm that our team as fact has ended to develop mc. Ilia has issues with access to internet from his work, at home he has much stronger priorities with family, the same for Andrew. As for me, I have heavy loading on work, after work I very busy on building my house. So there is no time for development mc. And of course, we are opened for any of our wishes to develop mc. Just let me know if someone wants to participate in development and I'll give write access to repo/wiki/transifex and I'll do some knowledge transfer about usual workflows (such as: preparing for release, code styling, where our ContinuousIntegration is placed and so on). I hope, mc will rise again with new blood. And I agree with Andrew: It weren't worst 5 years in my life Yeah, it was five happy years for me :) WBR, Slavaz -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 iEYEARECAAYFAlVlotoACgkQb3oGR6aVLpqysACfROPBo1/KrzNu73zwm8kpLTEI QbsAn2Gwet6bDc0FZc4nx4Gphsl4LSTE =QFDk -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel -- * David P. Both, RHCE Millennium Technology Consulting LLC Raleigh, NC, USA 919-389-8678 db...@millennium-technology.com www.millennium-technology.com www.databook.bz - Home of the DataBook for Linux DataBook is a Registered Trademark of David Both * This communication may be unlawfully collected and stored by the National Security Agency (NSA) in secret. The parties to this email do not consent to the retrieving or storing of this communication and any related metadata, as well as printing, copying, re-transmitting, disseminating, or otherwise using it. If you believe you have received this communication in error, please delete it immediately. ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
Please organise a pol to choose a right person. Personally my opinion - why not to give a steering wheel to Mooffie - the author of mc^2 fork? It seems like he did much more for mc than anybody else in past few years. I suggest his candidature. On May 27, 2015 8:19 AM, Slava Zanko slavaza...@gmail.com wrote: -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Luca, 27.05.2015 14:43, Luca Lazzarini wrote: Hi all! I am Luca, it is the first time that I write here. Honestly I cannot let mc die, so I would be happy to offer myself as volunteer to help the development. I am a web developer, for the most frontend but my background is C (from the university, I was pretty good, lets say almost medium weight). I am working as software developer in Amsterdam and I am building the frontend for a startup in London (from a friend) so I will be pretty busy for the next two months. Anyway after that time I should have sorted out the front end for the startup and I should have free time back! Ok, let me know when you'll have free time and I'll give you all needed permissions. Thanks! -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 iEYEARECAAYFAlVltkUACgkQb3oGR6aVLpqHTQCdHSaWTLFWRvCzsOwRNo42CBR6 +EYAnRat+vjHfUOhvxI0v/MngMrR8xzk =F6Nj -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
On 5/27/15, Paul Sokolovsky pmis...@gmail.com wrote: happens within your team. Whatever it is, please show goodwill by adding Egmont Koblinger to the maintainer team, if he agrees I second that! ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Hi Luca, 27.05.2015 14:43, Luca Lazzarini wrote: Hi all! I am Luca, it is the first time that I write here. Honestly I cannot let mc die, so I would be happy to offer myself as volunteer to help the development. I am a web developer, for the most frontend but my background is C (from the university, I was pretty good, lets say almost medium weight). I am working as software developer in Amsterdam and I am building the frontend for a startup in London (from a friend) so I will be pretty busy for the next two months. Anyway after that time I should have sorted out the front end for the startup and I should have free time back! Ok, let me know when you'll have free time and I'll give you all needed permissions. Thanks! -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1 iEYEARECAAYFAlVltkUACgkQb3oGR6aVLpqHTQCdHSaWTLFWRvCzsOwRNo42CBR6 +EYAnRat+vjHfUOhvxI0v/MngMrR8xzk =F6Nj -END PGP SIGNATURE- ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Article about Midnight Commander on OpenSource.com
I like Midnight Commander very much. And I have authored several articles for OpenSource.com. My latest, which has been in progress for several weeks - long before the current developers announced that they would be retiring from the project - is about Midnight Commander. Please check it out. http://opensource.com/business/15/5/midnight-commander -- * David P. Both, RHCE Millennium Technology Consulting LLC Raleigh, NC, USA 919-389-8678 db...@millennium-technology.com www.millennium-technology.com www.databook.bz - Home of the DataBook for Linux DataBook is a Registered Trademark of David Both * This communication may be unlawfully collected and stored by the National Security Agency (NSA) in secret. The parties to this email do not consent to the retrieving or storing of this communication and any related metadata, as well as printing, copying, re-transmitting, disseminating, or otherwise using it. If you believe you have received this communication in error, please delete it immediately. ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: [ANN] mc^2
On 5/8/15, Egmont Koblinger egm...@gmail.com wrote: Hi, How much work would it be to port your branch to 4.8.14 or git head? I'd really like to use your version for daily work Done. The 4.8.14 port has just been pushed to github. The Getting started (and Installation) chapter now has the appropriate branch name. (This is not yet the stage-by-stage patch I promised here to the maintainers (together with some reviewers guide document, to ease their work), but this will come soon.) ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
On 5/27/15, Volodymyr Buell vbu...@gmail.com wrote: Please organise a pol to choose a right person. Personally my opinion - why not to give a steering wheel to Mooffie Hey, hold the horses. I'm not at all a programming hotshot, and being practically anonymous here so far, I should be treated with suspicion. To borrow the [in]famous idiom, I haven't proven myself to be real man ;-) And nobody has actually looked into my code yet. There are better people here who have shown aptitude, responsibility and dedication for years (Egmont comes to mind). It seems [that Mooffie] did much more for mc than anybody else in past few years. No, that's patently untrue. First, it's just an illusion that writing mc^2 involved a lot of work. Second, Andrew Borodin has been doing a tremendous (and fantastic) work of cleaning up the code. People perhaps aren't aware of this. It won't be right to say that MC stagnates. As an aside: As one for whom MC is the center of the universe, I was surprised to learn that this is not the case for everybody, and that MC's lifeblood was not flowing as strong as one would imagine. Until a year or two ago I was convinced MC's development was financed and steered by the Illuminati... I'd guess, based on my own experience, that people (that is, programmers) are simply not aware of MC's predicament. After all, how would they? There's no sign for that unless one stumbles upon specific posts here. ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
Everything you said is right. But what current mc lacks are new features. Developers can be very good at code refactoring or cleaning-up or rewriting the editor to support charset detection... but in reality what people want is the tool that do what THEY want - and yes, plugins ARE the solution. Just give people a chance and github would bursting with mc extensions... So that's why I suggested you - in my opinion you are trying to change a course to the right direction. Another thing is the fact that the team is going to pass the project to guy why, i believe, is more anonymous to the project than you. I have nothing against Luca, do not misunderstand me, but still prefer the poll. On May 27, 2015 11:42 AM, Mooffie moof...@gmail.com wrote: On 5/27/15, Volodymyr Buell vbu...@gmail.com wrote: Please organise a pol to choose a right person. Personally my opinion - why not to give a steering wheel to Mooffie Hey, hold the horses. I'm not at all a programming hotshot, and being practically anonymous here so far, I should be treated with suspicion. To borrow the [in]famous idiom, I haven't proven myself to be real man ;-) And nobody has actually looked into my code yet. There are better people here who have shown aptitude, responsibility and dedication for years (Egmont comes to mind). It seems [that Mooffie] did much more for mc than anybody else in past few years. No, that's patently untrue. First, it's just an illusion that writing mc^2 involved a lot of work. Second, Andrew Borodin has been doing a tremendous (and fantastic) work of cleaning up the code. People perhaps aren't aware of this. It won't be right to say that MC stagnates. As an aside: As one for whom MC is the center of the universe, I was surprised to learn that this is not the case for everybody, and that MC's lifeblood was not flowing as strong as one would imagine. Until a year or two ago I was convinced MC's development was financed and steered by the Illuminati... I'd guess, based on my own experience, that people (that is, programmers) are simply not aware of MC's predicament. After all, how would they? There's no sign for that unless one stumbles upon specific posts here. ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
Hello, On Wed, 27 May 2015 21:04:33 +0200 Yury V. Zaytsev y...@shurup.com wrote: [] If you have been following the development, it would have been known to you that, as a matter of fact, all relevant discussions to the development of mc in the last 4-5 years were happening in Russian speaking Jabber conference at mc-...@conference.jabber.ru . [] to show that the project wasn't usurped by Soviet Obkom. -25 points to adequacy So, there's a bug tracker which doesn't get responses or even triaging, actually for months it's not even possible to submit a ticket at all. There's development mailing list, where it's barely possible to get a response from maintainers either. And yet there's Russian speaking Jabber conference. Keep counting points on adequacy of such maintainership, Yury. Keep suggesting people maintaining their own forks, for years, like you did. One of the problems mc projects has is all this infrastructure. It's stuck on the project model of 90ies. Gosh, it's hard, bloated, time-consuming, inefficient, leading to frustration. But you clutch to it and don't want to try the easy way, until people who support all that Sisyphus work ran out of resources. The last active committer was Andrew, but (unexpectedly to me) he decided to resign as well. Other people gave early warnings that not everything is right with project maintainership, so one can only guess why it's unexpected to you. I have personally publicly asked Egmont to take over the maintaintership multiple times, however, he is understandably reluctant to do so, and no one can force him to do it, if he doesn't want to. It's his decision. Perhaps it should be done step by step, while simplifying infrastructure. Initial steps are very easy: 1. Switch development process to github. Nothing needs to be done, except declaration - everything is already there. People should be just encouraged to submit bugs to github bugtracker, patches - as github pull requests. 2. People with mc experience should be given commit access to github repo. Basic criteria should be patches already accepted from a developer and presence of maintainership program (to be posted on the list). 3. Encourage all interested people to triage new bugreports and review patches. 4. Provide timely response to tickets/patches - point 3 should help with that, but that's the main work of maintainers - communicate with the community (not in the closed circle). 5. Then the hard part is left - quality standards for a release, and making a release. But this should come as natural step after all the above, so hopefully won't be frightening to new maintainers any longer. (But this step will require active involvement of old team, unlike the steps above which are automagic). -- Best regards, Paul mailto:pmis...@gmail.com ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
On Wed, 2015-05-27 at 13:37 +0300, Paul Sokolovsky wrote: There was a post on a popular Russian-speaking IT site geektimes.ru authored from an account with an associated full name Ilia Maslakov titled (translated) ms is over!?: http://geektimes.ru/post/250964/ I can confirm that this is indeed a post by Ilia, one of the current maintainers of Midnight Commander, speaking on his own behalf and without talking to anyone first. The situation was as follows: I checked into the Russian-speaking Jabber conference where the maintainers usually hang out to see if I can merge in some trivial patches directly into master. There, my conversation with Andrew happened, or rather he simply stated the quoted phrase and left. This was witnessed by Ilia, and he decided to make it public in the way that you have described. The post is written in a clear FUD manner, and implies too many far-fetched things, like: that departure of a maintainer means death of the project I think that it's rather your reading of this post which has lead you to make those far-fetched implications. that not this list titled mc-devel is where important discussion and announcements happen, but on delevoper's conference where people speak Russian, etc. If you have been following the development, it would have been known to you that, as a matter of fact, all relevant discussions to the development of mc in the last 4-5 years were happening in Russian speaking Jabber conference at mc-...@conference.jabber.ru . Note, that I'm not saying that I personally think that's the way it should be, but for better or worse it used to be this way. The current maintainers, namely Andrew Borodin, Slava Zanko, Ilia Maslakov, Sergei Trofimovich - please provide full disclosure of what happens within your team. As Slava has said, most current team members ended up having personal commitments that do not leave them enough time to maintain the project, and this has been obvious to anyone following the development for quite some time. The last active committer was Andrew, but (unexpectedly to me) he decided to resign as well. In what concerns me personally, I haven't been committing much at all in the recent years, but I have been taking care of the infrastructure, and I'm ready to continue doing so. I don't know if I'll manage to make enough time to start committing again, but most likely not in the near future, unless I will be able to negotiate sponsoring the development time with my current employer. In any case, we would certainly welcome anyone willing to take over the maintainership. However, sadly, no one has applied so far, and the call that I was about to issue by the end of this week was preempted by Ilia. Oh well, let's consider this as the official call for volunteers. I'll be reading the rest of today's traffic shortly. Whatever it is, please show goodwill by adding Egmont Koblinger to the maintainer team, if he agrees (including discussions and commit access), I have personally publicly asked Egmont to take over the maintaintership multiple times, however, he is understandably reluctant to do so, and no one can force him to do it, if he doesn't want to. It's his decision. to show that the project wasn't usurped by Soviet Obkom. -25 points to adequacy -- Sincerely yours, Yury V. Zaytsev ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
On Wed, 2015-05-27 at 18:42 +0300, Mooffie wrote: Second, Andrew Borodin has been doing a tremendous (and fantastic) work of cleaning up the code. People perhaps aren't aware of this. It won't be right to say that MC stagnates. Andrew was one of the best maintainers that I have seen so far, his work is deeply appreciated and he will be dearly missed. Until a year or two ago I was convinced MC's development was financed and steered by the Illuminati... This was actually quite close to the truth at some point, but sadly the circumstances have changed now, as Slava has explained. I'd guess, based on my own experience, that people (that is, programmers) are simply not aware of MC's predicament. After all, how would they? There's no sign for that unless one stumbles upon specific posts here. I don't think it's so easy; I have personally witnessed mc has dying at least twice, and the problem is simply that it's extremely hard to find someone how would commit at least 20 hours per week to a project for years without getting paid for it, because people need to sustain themselves in some way, and even part-time volunteering is no walk in the park. Of course, mc still has a large following of users that test the code and report bugs, and some of them even go as far as to suggest patches. However, most of these patches cannot be applied verbatim, but have to be fixed, and, at very least, reviewed. Still, many are unsurprisingly of a very high opinion of their own code, and would be happy to commit it directly to master, if they only get a chance. The amount of effort that it takes to review the patch, and fix it if it's of unacceptable quality is simply not appreciated, but, unfortunately, this doesn't happen by magic, but rather through huge recurring investments of time. The problem really is to find someone who is not only going to commit a few patches and be gone with the wind, but rather a person who will review the patches even in the case that he/she doesn't have personal interest in it. Someone who will carefully review contributions, fix them where appropriate and get them merged, like Andrew did. Someone who will triage bugs in the Trac, check if they can be reproduced, and fix them even if he/she doesn't suffer from them personally. Preferably, someone who is not deeply deranged and is capable of basic communication with humans. Someone who is ready to commit at least 20 hours per week to this cause on a regular basis (read years). Anyone? -- Sincerely yours, Yury V. Zaytsev ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
On Wed, 2015-05-27 at 12:30 -0400, Volodymyr Buell wrote: Just give people a chance and github would bursting with mc extensions... Let me give you an example: One contributor came up with an idea to fix a bug add a new feature; the patch was applied without much ado. A severe regression was later identified and fixed. Even later, it turned out, that the patch very badly broke (as in, segfault) a core feature as a side effect. The original author didn't take the responsibility for it, and there is no manpower to fix it, because a proper fix requires a very substantial engineering of how things work. Now we are left in a situation where a basic feature has become unusable in a new release, and won't be fixed anytime soon. This is a real story, which unfolded over the last couple of months. So yes, this kind of bursting with extensions is a very plausible scenario. In fact, this is exactly what is going to happen if a random person is going to take over control. -- Sincerely yours, Yury V. Zaytsev ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: mc is over!? - post by Ilia Maslakov on Russian-speaking IT site
On Wed, 2015-05-27 at 14:35 +0200, Luca Lazzarini wrote: The sooner I get the access to the repository, the sooner I can start to check the code. Hi Luca, You already have (read) access to the repository: https://github.com/MidnightCommander/mc The issue tracking system is (currently) at the following URL: http://www.midnight-commander.org/ I have briefly described what maintainership is all about in a neighboring email in this thread... -- Sincerely yours, Yury V. Zaytsev ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
Re: [ANN] mc^2
On Wed, 2015-05-27 at 19:25 +0300, Mooffie wrote: (This is not yet the stage-by-stage patch I promised here to the maintainers (together with some reviewers guide document, to ease their work), but this will come soon.) Sweet! Sorry, I was hoping to commit the stuff you added to the Trac in the last couple of days this evening, but... I ran out of time. -- Sincerely yours, Yury V. Zaytsev ___ mc-devel mailing list https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/mc-devel
