Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth [LWN.net]

Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth

Posted Feb 8, 2006 21:15 UTC (Wed) by cventers (subscriber, #31465)
In reply to: Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth by Quartz
Parent article: Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth

Yeah, but I think that it's the GNOME guys' attitudes (not their
underlying 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.

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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 point
I 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 his
CommandVoice(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 whining
Look at the resulting advertising! Brilliant!

Looking a Novell gift horse in the mouth

Posted Feb 9, 2006 16:18 UTC (Thu) by GreyWizard (guest, #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.