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Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth
Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth
Posted Feb 8, 2006 21:02 UTC (Wed) by Quartz (guest, #35770)Parent article: Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth
Bah. Sounds like a lot of blabbing for very little content. Yeah yeah, Novell could have done it differently, but since it gave the code away, Gnome can take its time to review and integrate at their pace. Novell obviously wants to put a differentiator in their product, yet keep being mostly open-source.
What's Gnome's Jeff Waugh problem? "killing the community" with code they gave away??? Please!
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Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth
Posted Feb 8, 2006 21:15 UTC (Wed) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link]
Yeah, but I think that it's the GNOME guys' attitudes (not theirunderlying concern) that is at fault.
Huge code drops are bad.
Waugh's comment about "killing the community" makes it sound a lot like
he feels an inherent obligation to swallow anything anyone tries to feed
him. If it were the kernel, they wouldn't be saying "you're killing the
community," rather, the author(s) would be potentially chastised after
which their product would be subjected to a slow and careful review
(speed actually dependant somewhat on how much interest there is in
feature Y).
So I think that there is a problem when development of a critical
component of open source like Xgl goes behind closed doors for a while.
But I don't think Waugh's comment was at all justified.
Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth
Posted Feb 8, 2006 21:32 UTC (Wed) by jdub (subscriber, #27) [Link]
It's worth considering that my comments were not specifically about Novell. They were about a compounded set of problems that have become assumptions in our community over a long period of time - unfortunately, these things come to the fore when examples present themselves.
Novell are doing brilliant work, and making awesome contributions to the Free Software desktop and GNOME in particular - they should receive full credit for funding and driving this work.
The problem for GNOME is broader than the immediate examples discussed, and without any value judgement implied about the contributions being made.
Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth
Posted Feb 9, 2006 0:09 UTC (Thu) by cventers (subscriber, #31465) [Link]
Well, whether or not it has anything to do with Novell and XGL, the pointI was trying to make is simply this. If the GNOME community feels
threatened by large code drops and private development efforts, the GNOME
community's response should simply be to not tolerate it. If you choose
not to tolerate it, then it is immediately of no threat to your community
(unless, of course, you used a license like the BSD license that would
allow someone to take your code and run).
Don't 'whine' about it to Novell or anyone else. Tell them that you
appreciate their great contribution, but that huge code drops aren't easy
to merge. It may be that the only way to make your point is to let time
pass and let the problem illustrate itself.
This, by the way, is why the occasional flames from people like Linus are
exceptionally valuable - because it puts forth a strong, commanding
position. And it's clear that the effect this has had on Linux is that
companies interested in Linux development *adapt* to support its
procedures.
I remember a comment Andrew Morton made in an interview. I'm
paraphrasing, but basically he gave an example of how IBM management
adapted. The IBM bosses couldn't simply tell their engineers "We need
feature X in the kernel by Friday". The picture Andrew painted was such
that when IBM management asked for something objectionable, the answer
they got back wasn't "the kernel guys won't accept this," rather, "we
won't accept this".
Of course, they wouldn't be empowered to say such things if that weren't
made possible by good open source management. Are you taking notes?
Hitting the nail on the head: LEADERSHIP
Posted Feb 9, 2006 10:33 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
If this were to be happening in the kernel code, Linus would use hisCommandVoice(TM): "go away, and don't come back unless it's with a lot of
small, each individually well-explained patches. Then, and only then,
we'll think about it". Instead, the GNOME guys are (IMO) just whining:
"oooh they are destroying our community". Oh, come on.
Hitting the nail on the head: LEADERSHIP
Posted Feb 9, 2006 11:34 UTC (Thu) by smitty_one_each (subscriber, #28989) [Link]
>guys are (IMO) just whiningLook at the resulting advertising! Brilliant!
Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth
Posted Feb 9, 2006 16:18 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (subscriber, #1026) [Link]
Please don't suppose everyone on LWN agrees with the semi-coherent rant to which you have responded. I suspect the silent majority have read what you actually wrote and are considering the issue rather than inventing straw men in your image. At least some of the people whining about your message (on a charge of "whining" -- oh the irony) can be counted on to post angry nonsense on just about any article that mentions GNOME or GTK+. Why they feel qualified to educate anyone about community project management is something of a mystery.
Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth
Posted Feb 9, 2006 18:04 UTC (Thu) by pimlott (subscriber, #1535) [Link]
since [Novell] gave the code away, Gnome can take its time to review and integrate at their pace.This is harder than you make it sound. Incorporating a piece of independently developed code, so that you can understand and maintain it, while retaining a coherent design, is a significant project. Especially as the original developers may not have much incentive to help--they've already shipped, and probably gone on to the next project. So a code drop puts the GNOME developers into a difficult position: Either accept the code as is, creating a less maintainable code-base; go through the painful process of incorporating it gradually; or reject valuable funtionality. If the code were developed in the open, they wouldn't be pushed into this corner.
I don't think that Jeff's comments were hyperbole. This is how fragmentation happens.
Do or Do Not Do: Either is Fine
Posted Feb 11, 2006 6:00 UTC (Sat) by AnswerGuy (subscriber, #1256) [Link]
They can look at the code; and decide if there are bits of if that theywant. They can decide that there are big enough chunks with clear enough
interfaces that they can be integrated into their work.
Or they can decide that it's too hard and that it'll be easier to just re-write.
Or they can decide that the features aren't sufficiently compelling.
Probably what's going to happen is that very "theys" will differ in their conclusions and some of them will go off in various directions. Some of the code will be merged; other bits won't --- some will be buggy and some bugs will be discovered and fixed during the merging process.
There will also be those who spend more time whining and pontificating than actually code or even reading code.
JimD