Acknowledgment of some positive progress that has been made so far this year.

On Wed, 16 Apr 2003, Biju Chacko wrote:

>>     So the question becomes, does Keith really speak for the
>>  community?  Because if he does, then there are more fundamental
>>  issues to discuss, and your concerns about the processes by which
>>  people contribute code have become secondary.  I too would like
>>  to get back to solving process problems.
>
>Solving the 'secondary' problems may just solve the 'fundamental'
>problems. Assume you fix the process issues, if the vast majority of
>people go back to hacking then you've proved your point -- wholesale
>changes aren't necessary. If people are *still* cribbing then you know
>you need to do more -- that Keith is, indeed, speaking for the
>community.
>
>IMO, small practical steps are just as important to resolving the
>current conflict as the high-level theoretical discussions going on.
>
>Frankly, I think most people are like you, Mark. They just want to get
>back to work. If you (ie Core) can reassure them that you're doing all
>you can to help them do that, then this entire storm in a teacup will
>abate.
>
>You are yet to demonstrate that you are doing something to fix the
>process problems. Solve that and you'll be one step closer to an overall
>problem.

I think many people will agree that there are some process and 
procedure problems that need to be effectively communicated, 
discussed as appropriately as possible and hopefully addressed in 
some way.

I also think however that when some of these problems _do_ get 
addressed, that people also acknowledge them, and express 
gratitude for them being addressed.  Since some people may not 
follow things closely, let me take a minute to express gratitude 
for some of the progress that has been made, roughly in order:

1) The opening of the private XFree86 development mailing list
[email protected] to the general public.

2) The renaming of the often confused "xpert" mailing list to 
"[email protected]" which was traditionally a closed list on 
which developers received bug reports submitted via the web form, 
and via email submissions, and ...

3) ... the opening up to the public of the incoming bug reports 
so that more people could see them and respond/help, etc.

4) The successful release of XFree86 4.3.0 with IMHO fewer
problems out of the get-go than some of the prior releases.

5) The opening of the official XFree86.org bugzilla bug tracking
database by XFree86.org despite many of the developers being
quite skeptical of it benefitting the project, many considering
it would make them more work than it saved.  They even got it up
and running online prior to other people who had already been
working on doing so as proof-of-concept, thereby eliminating the
external effort from needing to proceed.  ;o)  I've went through
about 2/3 of the bugs in bugzilla one at a time so far, and it is
my belief that it is turning out to be a success so far.  I'm
curious as to wether the other developers both on and off the 
core team think it has been successful so far, or if they think 
it's too soon to make such an assessment.  Any other feedback 
about it's upside/downside from the core team would also be great 
to hear.  I salute XFree86.org for being convinced into trying 
bugzilla.  ;o)

6) XFree86.org's creation of this mailing list forum for
discussion of problem issues that come up.  Even though the list
has mostly been a major flamefest since it's inception, people
are getting things off their chest, and as the dust settles, I
think that it is possible to see various people engage in more 
positive minded constructive communication and hopefully build 
upon the list of success stories this email is acknowledging

7) The decision to make tagged CVS snapshots every 2 weeks to 
encourage more people to try it out, and to simplify obtaining 
the code for many people who might not be able to easily deal 
with CVS.

8) Alan Hourihane's offer to start building and distributing
binary driver snapshots for a couple of different architectures
for people to try.  This will help to maximize end user and
developer testing, which should increase the number of bugs found
and fixed each release.  I'm sure it will have many other
benefits that will become more obvious over time.  #6, and #7
help to more closely follow the "release early, release often"
open source concept that has proven to be a great success with
numerous other projects out there, and I think it will for
XFree86.org also.  Sometime in the future, time permitting, I
would like to also volunteer to help out by doing nightly builds
on architectures I've got available locally as well (x86, alpha,
ia64, x86_64), and possibly even stealing some CPU cycles from 
the Red Hat build system for ppc, ppc64 or any other 
architectures not covered.

9) The addition of a couple of new developers with CVS write
access which I've just noticed recently (Ivan Pascal, Sven
Luther).  This is sure to help get some types of bugs fixed and
integrated faster, and perhaps to also help get external patches
from bugzilla and elsewhere integrated quicker.  Definitely a 
good sign.

10) Kevin Martin's quick integration into CVS of the numerous
patches that ATI has provided recently as well as several patches
from others that have been floating around for a while, and his
indication of trying to update the driver more often time
permitting.


Those are some of the progress that I've seen that comes to mind
in the new year, and I'm glad to see these things happen,
regardless of what the specific motivation was that was behind
each change.

There are various other things people would like to see addressed
also, and hopefully everyone can communicate the issues
effectively in non-threatening ways and engange in positive and
collaborative discussion, so that we can work towards seeing
various remaining concerns and issues discussed and hopefully
resolved in some manner as well.

It is likely that some issues may take longer than others, and
also likely that some suggestions will be more controversial than
others, but despite many of our various gripes and complaints,
some progress is possible as is shown in the list I've made
above.

While I'm often myself frustrated quite a bit from problems I
see, I want to acknowledge that some of the problems I've
mentioned in the past have been addressed now, and I hope to see
more progress between all parties via improved communication in
the future.

Thanks.


-- 
Mike A. Harris