Let's be honest here: The "steward" _will_ be the maintainer of some package. Even though Daniel (I think it was him) wrote up that nice memo that the steward is simply a person with expertise in some area, I believe that the formal act of declaring someone to be the steward effectively makes that person the maintainer. After all, this person seems to have declared himself the manager of some particular area of the system, so who else would you go to?
The note I wrote lays out some reasonable expectations about people that take care of certain packages. The main point of the note, the first clause is - "The steward is nobodys bitch". It was there because I observed sometimes a habit for people to think of themselves as "consumers" that have a "right" to something or other from the "provider" of some package. This works at various levels, from the Guides to maintainers of a specific package.
I think the most important thing to remember here is that everyone's here for fun, and the people that contribute are most used to seeing this as active fun. So the question is not "can we call them something formal so we can make various demands of them", but rather, "how can we make things more comfortable for them, so they'll continue to play in this sandbox".
Which is an important reason why I wrote that note to clarify expectations, so Stewards don't need to constantly do so. Which is also an important reason I didn't make a link between stewardship and specific people - it should be a role people decide to slip into and out of, not something to make a fuss about.
I think what Hannes and co are really trying to do is a. document who the wise men are, so that someone new has a way to find them. b. give control to those that earned it.
But control is also a burden, so be gentle about it. Or don't do it at all, just let it emerge (Do we need to declare Anthony steward of the compiler? I think that might just screw it up. He's doing wonderful work without any such prodding).
[Expectations from package maintainers] I think you present a very specific scenario for the "centralized maintainer". Someone other than the main maintainer can easily be the one to run regressions. Yet another can make the first cut about proposed fixes. The scenario you describe later, of work distributed among a group, with one "wise old man" sound much healthier to me.
Daniel
Andreas Raab andreas.raab@gmx.de wrote:
Hi Hannes,
[Note: I've cross-posted this message to the SqF list (original message is quoted below) since some of the aspects in this message relate to the larger picture of stewards. Also, I might be wrong on various accounts and in this case a clarification might be helpful]
What do you think?
I think that before I would agree to any such thing I need to have a _much_ clearer perspective on what the job of a steward entails. I barely withheld a heated reply to the threads involved, since to me, this looks very much like forcing people who have not agreed to do so into a position they may not want to be in.
Let's be honest here: The "steward" _will_ be the maintainer of some package. Even though Daniel (I think it was him) wrote up that nice memo that the steward is simply a person with expertise in some area, I believe that the formal act of declaring someone to be the steward effectively makes that person the maintainer. After all, this person seems to have declared himself the manager of some particular area of the system, so who else would you go to?
Not that I necessarily mind this, but a key issue is what we expect the steward to do in a world of decentralized packages. The way I see it, we'd probably want the steward to harvest fixes, goodies, enhancements along the way. We probably expect him to run tests if everything works allright in version XYZ of Squeak. We probably expect him to update packages regularly. All very good things - if you have the time for it. And the short answer is: I don't. I simply do not have the time to scan the postings at Squeak-Dev, I don't have the time to run regression tests, to test each and every individual part. At least not for the stuff you were proposing, and definitely not in an age of "montly releases".
An important aspect in the maintenance debate is that Squeak does not lend itself easily to the style of decentralized development we're anticipating. Most problematic at this point is that there is no API for any of the package that a client can rely on, no dependencies, versions etc. In the days of the monolithic image that wasn't as big a problem as you could simply browse all the senders of some class/message to see where it's used. With SM, we need a more declarative style that tells both, clients and framework developers which methods can be relied upon and which can't. Without this, maintaining a package simply becomes a nightmare.
Personally, I simply _use_ all of the packages you were referring to. My only interested at this point in maintenance is for the very lowest level of Balloon3D in which I would like to stay compatible between what's currently in Squeak and what is in Croquet (note: I did the Balloon3D and removal packages as a service to the community, not for myself; I don't need them to be removed, in fact I need them hardly at all). Other than that, I might post a fix, goodie, whatever to any of the other areas but fundamentally I am not interested in maintaining this or any further aspect at this point.
So as far as the maintenance aspect is involved, my answer is "no" at this point. I simply cannot imagine spending enough time in any of these areas with a decentralized model of development. As far as being the "wise man" for some particular area is involved, there is simply no need to declare me the formal steward, because it wouldn't change anything - after all, if I see some question that I find the time to answer, I'll do this anyways. Given that, what would be the point in declaring me the "steward"? You get everything that I can handle already, and formally declaring me to be the "steward" can only mean that you want to assign new tasks to me, tasks for which I cannot guarantee that I can or want to handle them.
Given the above, can you see any reason whatsoever why I should (or even want to) be declared a steward for the areas you are proposing?!
<off-topic> Perhaps as some additional food for thoughts, if I think about the form in which I could imagine to be a steward/maintainer for some aspect of Squeak it immediately comes to my mind that the first and faremost issue is that of enabling _others_ to be able to work on that same package. Since all of us have only a limited amount of time I think it is critical that more than one person is responsible for a particular package. One way in which I could imagine this, is by essentially giving each package its own update stream which is used for the developers of some package. In this case, any of the developers would be able to post and review changes that are done in this area, and "releases" mean only that the incremental updates are merged and put out as package at SM.
Of course, this requires trust in the developers working in a particular area, but this could then be the primary task of the Steward - to identify developers both interested and capable of working in this area. The essential model would be that the community (represented by the guides) hands their trust into the Steward and the Steward hands this trust to the group of developers involved. Whether the Steward herself hacks along with the developers is quite a different matter; she would simply be the person ultimately responsible for some package. So that feature requests, bug fixes, blames would rightfully go to the Steward and from there be relayed to the developers involved. Conceptually, SourceForge is not a bad model for this - it allows registered developers to participate in projects for which they need blessing by one of the admins of that project. In Squeak terms, the initial admin for one of these projects (packages) would be the steward and from there, more people could join in.
</off-topic>
Cheers,
- Andreas
-----Original Message----- From: Hannes Hirzel [mailto:hannes.hirzel.squeaklist@bluewin.ch] Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2003 5:02 PM To: Andreas Raab Cc: Doug Clapp; Brent Vukmer Subject: Your stewardship(s)
Dear Andreas
May I draw your attention to the page Stewards for Packages http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3088
Is it OK that we put you on the list as the steward for Balloon and Balloon3D. I think that no discussion on the list is needed because as the original author of this you actually *are* the steward as well unless you want to change that. The same might apply for other "Squeak estates", FFI for example.
What do you think?
Regards Hannes
Squeakfoundation mailing list Squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/listinfo/squeakfoundation
Hi Daniel,
[Expectations from package maintainers] I think you present a very specific scenario for the "centralized maintainer".
You are right. This is why I said I would need a much clearer understanding about it before I would be willing to join in. I have tried to look at it from both sides - namely from the side of what someone might naively expect from a steward and from the side in which I would feel comfortable with those expectations. As you surely noticed the latter half of my message did not take back anything from the expectactions but rather described an environment in which people with limited resources might be able to handle those.
I think the most important thing to remember here is that everyone's here for fun, and the people that contribute are most used to seeing this as active fun. So the question is not "can we call them something formal so we can make various demands of them", but rather, "how can we make things more comfortable for them, so they'll continue to play in this sandbox".
Thanks. In this case I won't be any steward for a foreseeable time - after all I feel much more comfortable without any such name tag.
Cheers, - Andreas
-----Original Message----- From: squeakfoundation-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeakfoundation-bounces@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Daniel Vainsencher Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2003 5:33 AM To: Discussing the Squeak Foundation Subject: [Squeakfoundation]RE: Your stewardship(s)
Let's be honest here: The "steward" _will_ be the maintainer of some package. Even though Daniel (I think it was him) wrote up
that nice memo
that the steward is simply a person with expertise in some
area, I believe
that the formal act of declaring someone to be the steward
effectively makes
that person the maintainer. After all, this person seems to
have declared
himself the manager of some particular area of the system,
so who else would
you go to?
The note I wrote lays out some reasonable expectations about people that take care of certain packages. The main point of the note, the first clause is - "The steward is nobodys bitch". It was there because I observed sometimes a habit for people to think of themselves as "consumers" that have a "right" to something or other from the "provider" of some package. This works at various levels, from the Guides to maintainers of a specific package.
I think the most important thing to remember here is that everyone's here for fun, and the people that contribute are most used to seeing this as active fun. So the question is not "can we call them something formal so we can make various demands of them", but rather, "how can we make things more comfortable for them, so they'll continue to play in this sandbox".
Which is an important reason why I wrote that note to clarify expectations, so Stewards don't need to constantly do so. Which is also an important reason I didn't make a link between stewardship and specific people - it should be a role people decide to slip into and out of, not something to make a fuss about.
I think what Hannes and co are really trying to do is a. document who the wise men are, so that someone new has a way to find them. b. give control to those that earned it.
But control is also a burden, so be gentle about it. Or don't do it at all, just let it emerge (Do we need to declare Anthony steward of the compiler? I think that might just screw it up. He's doing wonderful work without any such prodding).
[Expectations from package maintainers] I think you present a very specific scenario for the "centralized maintainer". Someone other than the main maintainer can easily be the one to run regressions. Yet another can make the first cut about proposed fixes. The scenario you describe later, of work distributed among a group, with one "wise old man" sound much healthier to me.
Daniel
Andreas Raab andreas.raab@gmx.de wrote:
Hi Hannes,
[Note: I've cross-posted this message to the SqF list
(original message is
quoted below) since some of the aspects in this message
relate to the larger
picture of stewards. Also, I might be wrong on various
accounts and in this
case a clarification might be helpful]
What do you think?
I think that before I would agree to any such thing I need
to have a _much_
clearer perspective on what the job of a steward entails. I
barely withheld
a heated reply to the threads involved, since to me, this
looks very much
like forcing people who have not agreed to do so into a
position they may
not want to be in.
Let's be honest here: The "steward" _will_ be the maintainer of some package. Even though Daniel (I think it was him) wrote up
that nice memo
that the steward is simply a person with expertise in some
area, I believe
that the formal act of declaring someone to be the steward
effectively makes
that person the maintainer. After all, this person seems to
have declared
himself the manager of some particular area of the system,
so who else would
you go to?
Not that I necessarily mind this, but a key issue is what
we expect the
steward to do in a world of decentralized packages. The way
I see it, we'd
probably want the steward to harvest fixes, goodies,
enhancements along the
way. We probably expect him to run tests if everything
works allright in
version XYZ of Squeak. We probably expect him to update
packages regularly.
All very good things - if you have the time for it. And the
short answer is:
I don't. I simply do not have the time to scan the postings
at Squeak-Dev, I
don't have the time to run regression tests, to test each and every individual part. At least not for the stuff you were proposing, and definitely not in an age of "montly releases".
An important aspect in the maintenance debate is that
Squeak does not lend
itself easily to the style of decentralized development
we're anticipating.
Most problematic at this point is that there is no API for
any of the
package that a client can rely on, no dependencies,
versions etc. In the
days of the monolithic image that wasn't as big a problem
as you could
simply browse all the senders of some class/message to see
where it's used.
With SM, we need a more declarative style that tells both,
clients and
framework developers which methods can be relied upon and
which can't.
Without this, maintaining a package simply becomes a nightmare.
Personally, I simply _use_ all of the packages you were
referring to. My
only interested at this point in maintenance is for the
very lowest level of
Balloon3D in which I would like to stay compatible between
what's currently
in Squeak and what is in Croquet (note: I did the Balloon3D
and removal
packages as a service to the community, not for myself; I
don't need them to
be removed, in fact I need them hardly at all). Other than
that, I might
post a fix, goodie, whatever to any of the other areas but
fundamentally I
am not interested in maintaining this or any further aspect
at this point.
So as far as the maintenance aspect is involved, my answer
is "no" at this
point. I simply cannot imagine spending enough time in any
of these areas
with a decentralized model of development. As far as being
the "wise man"
for some particular area is involved, there is simply no
need to declare me
the formal steward, because it wouldn't change anything -
after all, if I
see some question that I find the time to answer, I'll do
this anyways.
Given that, what would be the point in declaring me the
"steward"? You get
everything that I can handle already, and formally
declaring me to be the
"steward" can only mean that you want to assign new tasks
to me, tasks for
which I cannot guarantee that I can or want to handle them.
Given the above, can you see any reason whatsoever why I
should (or even
want to) be declared a steward for the areas you are proposing?!
<off-topic> Perhaps as some additional food for thoughts, if I think
about the form in
which I could imagine to be a steward/maintainer for some
aspect of Squeak
it immediately comes to my mind that the first and faremost
issue is that of
enabling _others_ to be able to work on that same package.
Since all of us
have only a limited amount of time I think it is critical
that more than one
person is responsible for a particular package. One way in
which I could
imagine this, is by essentially giving each package its own
update stream
which is used for the developers of some package. In this
case, any of the
developers would be able to post and review changes that
are done in this
area, and "releases" mean only that the incremental updates
are merged and
put out as package at SM.
Of course, this requires trust in the developers working in
a particular
area, but this could then be the primary task of the
Steward - to identify
developers both interested and capable of working in this area. The essential model would be that the community (represented by
the guides)
hands their trust into the Steward and the Steward hands
this trust to the
group of developers involved. Whether the Steward herself
hacks along with
the developers is quite a different matter; she would
simply be the person
ultimately responsible for some package. So that feature
requests, bug
fixes, blames would rightfully go to the Steward and from
there be relayed
to the developers involved. Conceptually, SourceForge is
not a bad model for
this - it allows registered developers to participate in
projects for which
they need blessing by one of the admins of that project. In
Squeak terms,
the initial admin for one of these projects (packages)
would be the steward
and from there, more people could join in.
</off-topic>
Cheers,
- Andreas
-----Original Message----- From: Hannes Hirzel [mailto:hannes.hirzel.squeaklist@bluewin.ch] Sent: Saturday, March 08, 2003 5:02 PM To: Andreas Raab Cc: Doug Clapp; Brent Vukmer Subject: Your stewardship(s)
Dear Andreas
May I draw your attention to the page Stewards for Packages http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/3088
Is it OK that we put you on the list as the steward for Balloon and Balloon3D. I think that no discussion on the list is needed because as the original author of this you actually *are* the steward as well unless you want to change that. The same might apply for other "Squeak estates", FFI for example.
What do you think?
Regards Hannes
Squeakfoundation mailing list Squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/listinfo/squeakfoundation
Squeakfoundation mailing list Squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/listinfo/squeakfoundation
squeakfoundation@lists.squeakfoundation.org