[YAMos-dev] Recent development issues

Hi everybody!

It is not really nice to see how the common tone has gone down again. Two weeks
ago Olaf was satisfied by getting his SAS/C support back and David Rey rejoined
the team. Really nice. Finally there seems to be some interest in YAM's further
development outside the very limited range of the usual persons (Jens, me).

But now there is heavy disagreement again, in line with rude words (at least
some statements are interpreted as this) and all negative bells and whistles.

Does it really have to be this way???

I must admid that every developer has its own "concrete head" and this one
becomes even harder if a project is ones own "baby", as that person has done the
most work on the project. Even I for myself have some rules which better should
not be bend too much. But hey, there is always the possibility of a compromise.

David has certain ideas and rules concerning translation and documentation.
These rules are probably quite good well-grounded and originate from various
other translation/documentation projects.
Jens is a developer by heart and knows what kind of features can bring a project forward and which features don't. He also has its own visions of what YAM should be able to do in the future.
So, both of you a quite experienced in project work, but each of you in different areas.
Whenever someone thinks that something is not as he/she likes, then there should be a discussion whether to change this thing or not. But this discussion should never start like "this MUST be changed, just because I think that something is wrong".
David, you like to see every string in YAM translatable. Generally this is a very good approach, as foreign words might confuse certain users.
Jens, you want to keep YAM's About window as it is, with a scrolling area that contains just english text, because a rough translation could destroy the layout of the window and there is not really much translatable "text".
Well, at this point I must keep with Jens. There are just two small passages which could really be translated ("This program is free software..." and "The latest news about YAM can be found at..."). Everything else just consists of names of persons, project names and URLs. Nothing worth translating or which can be translated at all. We could change YAM to make these two paragraphs translatable while keeping the rest as it is. The point is: is it really worth the effort? And if we translate this stuff, what comes next? Do we have to translate the GNU public licence, just because some user might not understand english? I have looked into many other projects, but the GPL was *always* included unchanged, and that means: in english!
But yes, Jens, sometimes you should be a little bit more open minded than you already are (as you say). I often proposed changes in YAM to you and your first answer was "No. Nobody needs that. I think it is superflous." While I sometimes have been a bit "fast forward" and didn't think long enough about the proposal (which then really was superflous), I must say you are sometimes a "blocker". Just because you don't need a feature yourself doesn't mean automatically that other people don't need it, too.
I know you had similar disussions with several people, which all ended like the same: steady unsolvable conflict. Finally both sides keep their concrete heads. One continues to do the work in exactly the way he wants to do it and the other one quits completely and leaves the battle field (like David did). 

That is no real solution!!
Sometimes I also feel sick to discuss a topic over and over again. But then we must (yes, MUST) find a solution which fits the majority of us, if not all. 100% consense is not always possible, but in the end everybody should be able to cope with the final solution. If something has been decided it should be kept. If it later prooves as a bad decision nevertheless, it can be changed again. But in the meantime we should give other people (the beta testers!) the chance to make their own experience and let them tell us if our decision was wise or not. We are not gods!!
Please, let us work together on YAM. Mud wars like "Mama, der Junge hat Blödmann zu mir gesagt, darum rede ich nicht mehr mit dem!" (Mum, that boy called me a dumb-ass, hence I don't talk to him anymore!).
This is just my opinion. Just an opinion, no rule, no law. Keep our development and discussion professional and try to keep personal emotions out of discussions. 

Ok, now I crawl back under my stone and you can bash on me :)

--
Thore Böckelmann
Paderborn, Germany



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