[openbeos] Re: Openness

  • From: "Axel Dörfler" <axeld@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: openbeos@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 14 May 2007 13:59:18 +0200 CEST

"Hugo Santos" <hugosantos@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[... elected body ...]
> be contradictory. For instance, I've seen mentioned that only trusted
> people enter the admin team, and then the same people mention that
> whoever is interested in helping should join the admin team.

That's because we need to make it easier for non-developers to work 
together with Haiku - ie. for some time, it worked quite well to have 
Jorge as part of the admin team, even though he didn't contribute 
before; it was just necessary to work together closely.
In the beginning, the admin group was supposed to only contain team 
leaders, we only got away from that because the whole team leader thing 
didn't work out well - being such a small team.

>   In another point, it has been said more than once that the admin
> team is made up of developers, but if one looks at the commits lists
> for at least the past two years, some of the admin team members have
> marginal contributions. [1] An OSS project is very dynamic, and some
> people leave, and new people arrive. With all due respect for the
> people which have contributed in the past, i don't think that if they
> did contribute significantly, for instance 5 years ago, should
> continue in the decision-making process now.

I disagree - being part of the admin team shouldn't be determined by 
code submissions alone, especially not just recent contributions. Every 
line of code that makes Haiku is important, no matter if it has been 
written a month or 3 years ago; we're still working on the first 
release, it's still up-to-date code, and it still makes a significant 
contribution to R1.
Also, contributing to discussions in a fruitful way can already be a 
valuable contribution, as can be providing insights into development 
problems. There are many ways to contribute to Haiku without coding.
As long as Haiku is a small project as it is now, and has a target as 
well defined as R1, it doesn't make any sense (to me) to have the 
members of the admin group elected. The time will come where we 
possibly need to change how Haiku functions as a project, but IMO it's 
not there now. It's also important to have a friendly atmosphere in the 
group, that everyone has a similar vision, and to be able to work 
together nicely.

A small group works much more effectively if they know each other well 
- but of course, this will only work to a certain point.

> Then, there are issues
> related to copyright which are not clear to me at all. Some of the
> code's copyright has been assigned to Haiku Inc, which means that
> Haiku Inc has the ability for instance to change the license which it
> enforces with that code. Considering the distribution guidelines 
> which
> have been referred to in this list, it actually seems that will 
> happen
> -- some of the Haiku bits will have restricted use.

That's why it is important that Haiku Inc. is acting as part of Haiku. 
The distribution guidelines were discussed and agreed upon in the whole 
admin group.

>   A quick point regarding mailing lists, I agree very much with the
> point you make considering SNR, however that shouldn't be a reason to
> keep mailing lists archives closed, unless trade secrets are 
> discussed
> in it.

What reason should we have to make them public? What valid interest is 
there? It's a private forum for a reason, and it's not just signal-to-
noise ratio; it's also because we can freely discuss everything without 
having to worry how it's perceived to the outside world.

>   From a developer point of view, i would also like to see better
> repository access, besides being a bit flaky, BerliOS is a bit slow
> for me (and i've heard similiar reports from people in the US).
[...]

We've switched from SourceForge because of the problems we had with it, 
and BerliOS provided effectively a *much* better service since then.
The only problem of BerliOS AFAICT is that they are less transparent 
and open about potential problems; you rarely get to know the reason 
for an outage. But as long as their service works as good as it does, I 
see no reason to switch again.

>   Finally, organizing the finances can be troublesome as it is, but 
> if
> the way the money is spent is not clear to people involved and to the
> donors, again, it leads to distrust and people might/will stop
> donating. I'm sure Michael is very busy, but at least a financial
> report for 2006 should be public by now.

Definitely.

Bye,
   Axel.


Other related posts: