[RANT] Come on people! ;)

Michael Latta lattam at mac.com
Wed Dec 15 22:05:41 UTC 2004


Stephane,

To some degree you are correct.  It is never that simple.  But, the 
current situation is no different than many projects face.  There are 
some developers with more time or more productivity, or both, working 
on some areas of the product than others.  It is a challenging 
situation to manage, but not all that rare.  A typical response is 
either to make the more productive people slow down, make them do tasks 
they are less productive on, or attempt to increase the resources in 
the other areas.  As a volunteer effort mostly we can not afford to do 
any of those.  We need every contribution we can get that improves the 
environment.

With Smalltalk we have a rare option.  We can add tools that support 
our work, far more effectively than in many other environments.  If the 
rate of change is too high for some packages to keep up on a release-by 
release basis, then have fewer major releases, and more releases for 
testing within the community.  For example rather than doing 3.9 with 
all components, release a 3.8.5 with those components that can be 
ported to the next core release.  When all the packages are caught-up 
than call it 3.9, or the like.  Have intermediate releases that are for 
"internal" use to get new technologies in the image and people working 
with it.  Or simply extend the alpha/beta periods, whatever.  We can 
also create tools that make it easier to know if a package is impacted 
by changes.

Michael


On Dec 15, 2004, at 1:29 PM, Stéphane Rollandin wrote:

> goran.krampe at bluefish.se wrote:
>
> 1)
>> - Most of us aren't working full time on this. Or rather almost noone
>> is. This means NOONE owes NOTHING to ANYONE. Ok?
>
> 2)
>> - Development follows a simple rule: If there is a Squeaker interested
>> in something it gets worked at. Period. No, I said PERIOD.
>
> 3)
>> - And what happens when package X isn't being maintained properly and
>> someone is sad about it?
>> Answer: It bloody rots. But *so what*? If noone is prepared to 
>> maintain
>> it then obviously noone cares. Let it rot I say! Bah! :)
>
> just one thought:
>
> it could be that because of 1) and 2), all packages can not be updated 
> frequently enough for 3) to be true. it may be that people care but 
> cannot follow the rate of changes. if a lot of people work at the same 
> time, although they work slowly the overall system moves very fast 
> (just consider the traffic on this list)...and because people work 
> slowly things get broken along the way and eventually the system may 
> fall in pieces.
>
> so the picture is not so nice I think. we may have a real problem here 
> if there is not some sort of centralized direction for Squeak 
> development, or at least common goals and strong guidelines. just 
> having fun may not be enough.
>
>
> Stef
>
>
>




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