[PROPOSAL] Looking ahead

Scott Brickner scottb at brickner.net
Mon Jun 27 14:31:25 EDT 2005


Stephen McConnell wrote:

>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: dev-dpml-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org 
>>[mailto:dev-dpml-bounces at lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of 
>>Alexandros Paramythis
>>Sent: Tuesday, 28 June 2005 1:38 AM
>>To: DPML Development
>>Subject: Re: [PROPOSAL] Looking ahead
>>
>>I was wondering if the current situation reminded anyone of Avalon...
>>    
>>
>
>Yep - Avalon made the decision not to deal with a problem and divide up a
>code base as the easy exit.
>
>This will not happen in the DPML.
>  
>
There's a lot of name-calling and bickering going on here and it's not
really productive. Let's see if we can cut through it a little bit and
get to a point that /is/ productive. I'm going to try to keep my own
opinion out of this in the interest of trying to be sufficiently
impartial that I can help resolve it.

First, to recap, it's obvious that Niclas (and clearly others) have some
serious issues with the way Steve has been behaving in the community.
Apparently he took the issues up privately with Steve in early May and
wasn't satisfied with the response. After that, Niclas began airing many
of those issues on the dev list - you can look in the archives for the
content. Until this morning, Steve has chosen to ignore all of Niclas'
comments and has not responded in a public forum - because of this, in
the following, I have to infer Steve's position.

At the beginning, Niclas' chief complaint seemed to be that Steve was
doing a "one-man-show" - he was making wholesale changes to the
architecture of Metro in large steps, without involving the community.
As I understand it, though, there was a prior agreement that at least
some of that was acceptable - the community had discussed whether
incremental migration from the Avalon legacy to the new goals of Metro
was appropriate, or whether it would be better to take a "big-bang"
approach. The community agreed on the "big-bang" approach, and Steve
appears to believe that he's been acting under that aegis.

On the other hand, the "big-bang" approach was primarily directed at the
migration from Avalon to Metro. Steve has made some very significant
changes to Transit in the interim, many of which were architecturally
and operationally significant. To my recollection, there wasn't any sort
of community consensus involved there.

Niclas has already threatened to leave the community. He seems to have
given up all hope for Metro and has focused instead on Magic and
Transit. What's touched off the latest bickering is that Transit is (in
Niclas' opinion) in danger of suffering the same effects that (again, in
his opinion) have made Metro worthless. He's now forked the code within
the SVN repository with the intention of providing a "usable" baseline
without Steve's meddling. Steve hasn't really said what he intends to do
in response, but has rather strongly denounced the fork with a "this
will not happen" stance.

Ok - enough history. Let's see if there's any way *out* of the mess.
Both Niclas and Steve contribute a lot to the community - frankly it's
not entirely clear to me that the community would survive if either of
them left. It's pretty fragile right now with the current rift.

One thing we need to get past is the "name-calling". What's at issue
here is not whether Steve thinks it's ok to be a one-man-show, as Niclas
frames it. It's about behavior, not about thoughts. You can /think/
anything you like, as long as you /behave/ in a way that the community
accepts.

So, Niclas, can you be specific about things Steve has done, or is
currently doing, that you find unacceptable? Then I think we need to
hear Steve's side of the story - continuing to ignore the situation is
unacceptable behavior, too. There's a real problem here, ignoring it
won't make it go away.

Once we agree on what the problem is, then we can discuss potential
solutions - which, to my mind, is the biggest thing missing in all of
Niclas' sniping. There's a lot of complaining, but not much concrete in
terms of what would be acceptable.






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