Re: Quick question... Is this project dead?!

Þann Mánudagur 17 janúar 2005 18:12 skrifaði Kimmo Sundqvist:
> It's been like this the whole year.  Truth is, the "cabal" of Y isn't
> hiding anything from us.  They have said many times that everything is
> public and everyone sees the same code.

Great.  And hopefully it's in CVS or Subversion or similar, where multiple 
branches can be maintained and anybody who wishes to can submit changes.

> But, by custom and by ownership, they hold the keys to the project.

Sure, and they can reverse your commits, or revoke your account, or tell you 
to nark off because they don't want any help.  That's their decision.  
However I've seen it stated on this thread that things are "designed 
in such a way that everyone worldwide has the same say in what goes into 
Y".

> In practice it is not an exaggeration.  The "cabal" (I think that is Andrew
> and Mark) has refused to communicate about the details, or at least
> Andrew's style has been so discouraging that nobody has ever tried.

As you said yourself, they hold the keys.  If this is truly the case, then it 
is their choice.  If you don't like it, go start your own project.  Otherwise 
try to help with this one WITHOUT the petty arguments.

> And if the list maintainers are "the problem", sitting on the project and
> living their lives as if it didn't exist, then who are you gonna call?

This is the case with many successful projects.  I worked on another project 
for several months, and the maintainer had pretty much abandoned the project 
(no desire to "lead" things, and no time to develop).  The list there was an 
anarchy as well, with a very aggravating and opinionated senior developer, 
and a couple stupid and annoying trollish others.  But arguments and 
consensus on what "should" happen got nowhere and just caused a lot of people 
to quit, whereas people ignoring the fighting, not blaming others, and 
actually doing work did indeed progress the project.

> Only to hear that the code is useless, because the Y, as far as it was
> done, is going to be scrapped for a second try.

Well stop waiting and doing nothing then, and find out how you can help with 
the rewrite effort, or enhance the existing version.  If your changes are 
worthwhile, you can always port them to a rewrite later.

> The "whiners" are not some annoying minority, preventing all constructive
> work and discussion.  They are the disillusioned majority that is calling
> for discussion and constructive work.

And who is actually _doing_ work?

> Do a second round of "who are you with and who are you against."

Umm.  No.  This is stupid and childish.

> Now that it's clear there hasn't been any rewrite, the project either dies
> or everyone starts coding for the Y that now exists, even if it desperately
> needs the redesign and rewrite.

Good projects are quite often redesigned midway through.  But the old versions 
aren't abandoned while everyone clings to the hope of the next version while 
sitting idle and waiting for somebody else to come through.  Yes, coding 
should be done for the Y that now exists, AND effort should be put forth into 
the rewrite.

> It is not constant.  It probably started a moment before you joined.

It has been constant since I joined, that was all I was stating.

> I think all this was basically a misunderstanding about the rewrite of the
> whole Y. 

Miscommunication and misunderstanding is almost always the case of online 
disagreements.

> This thread is the most mature, serious, necessary and the most
> problem-solving thread this list has ever seen, and nobody's going to kill
> it.

Fair enough, I mostly just didn't want to encourage a bunch more argument in 
the form of flames on the list.  But what does need to die is useless 
commentary like "well I don't like what you say so I'm unsubscribing now" and 
"good riddance then, thank god you're gone", "why doesn't so-and-so do their 
work", "I feel so oppressed", and "this is a dead project and will never come 
back".  Mature discussion and planning future developments is fine and 
healthy.  But the whining and bickering is only going to make things worse.

Cheers,
-- 
Casey Allen Shobe - Open Source Software Solutions
  [email protected] - http://osss.net