[dillo-patches] Re: What hope for Dillo by now? Thoughts please?
- From: Tom Barnes-Lawrence <tomble@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: dillo-patches@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 6 Jul 2007 07:40:52 +0100
Meh.
I spent quite some time writing a reply, but it had got pretty long and
it was taking me a *lot* of effort to try to pare it down without losing
significant points- whilst I also had to focus on selecting a new DVD
burner (which took a while but should arrive today). I didn't want to have
people say "WTF?!" at a huge email and close it without reading it.
So instead, here's the substantially condensed version with lots left out.
If anyone wants to hear the long version, with more details, observations,
ideas and extended rationales etc, I can post that too.
Madis wrote:
> Someone has to fork it, if we want to do any meaningful development.
Yes, which is what I'd been thinking too, and other people have also said
it in the past, and others still have vaguely wanted to do it. It seems like
there's much demand for doing so, but it's not happened for various reasons:
--I think nobody really wants the substantial responsibility of becoming the
maintainer of a fork. But I think that in fact, a group of say 3 or 4 people
could share responsibilities for general maintenance and leadership of a fork
(and maybe vote on decisions that have to be made) such that they could do
it mostly part-time. The roles, workload, and/or responsibilities, could be
divided up or shared all sorts of ways as the group saw fit. Numerous tasks
could even be delegated to outside the leadership.
For some time, Rome was lead by a "Triumvirate", I don't really see why a
software project couldn't be.
--Also, probably nobody wants to have to devote time to programming the
bigger parts of the project. But I think that at this stage in Dillo's life
cycle, what it needs most of all is for people to *manage* the project, and
*enable others* to contribute to it. Generally these outside contributors
would start as people who just want to hack at it a bit, but if they get
really drawn in, they might become *long-term* contributors, in a way
that *wouldn't* happen in the main Dillo project.
Some of those becoming long-term contributors would also want to join the
maintenance/management team, further relieving pressure on the rest of it.
--And of course, people wanting to do a fork would typically want to know that
people would be interested in *contributing* to it; this would also apply to
doing a group-run fork, maybe even moreso, as that approach would mostly
involve letting others do the work they want to (whilst still acting as
gatekeepers and basic quality-control on that work). Not much I can say for
this, I can't wave a magic wand and produce contributors from thin air.
--Ok I suppose there's also the "it seems unfriendly" aspect. Not much I
can suggest about that either, other than "try to avoid hostility" :P
So, I'd like to hear what anybody here thinks about these ideas (maybe
there's just us 2 here), and in particular, as I say, we *NEED* to know how
many people might be interested in contributing to a fork if one happened.
It'd also be interesting (if there were enough people in total) to hear if
anybody else would consider co-leading such a group-run fork, but if there
were clear demand, someone else *might* take on the whole thing anyway. Or
otherwise, maybe there could be an even less hierarchical approach...
FWIW I for one would probably like to make a few minor code contributions
at some point (I'm in no hurry, having plenty else to do), and yes, I would
consider co-maintaining such a project, depending on who else there is out
there and what responsibilities would be required of me. And as I say,
there's further details etc in the much longer email if anyone wants me to
post that.
We come to praise Dillo, not to bury it!
-Tomble
--
I think I need a new signature
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