Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Eric Schabell <eric AT schabell.com>(by way of Eric Schabell <eschabell AT sourcemage.org>)]

Howdy all!

I have been talking with the core team (as in Team Leaders) for the last few 
days about what the next steps are to be and have come up with the following 
ideas that I would like to get moving as we come up to the end of this year.

I make the following proposal based on allot of observations from  the last 
few months:

Aside of the matter of who leads what, I would like to make a proposal that
 we drop the drive for a 1.0 release and the whole idea that we want to push
 for a distribution that MUST have releases and release dates.

(*don't panic yet, I am going somewhere with this)

I remember getting into this distro because I wanted it to live on so that I
could use it, not so that I would become a thing that the whole world needs
to use. I see our biggest obstacle being that we try to make a distro release
w/o a real complete and dedicated team. This is not a bad thing, but
something we need to identify and make work for us. Why not continue to
develope and EVENTUALLY release a 1.0 and onwards as it happens? It seems
that we will always have setbacks where developers have to leave key
positions so lets release some of the stress and make those positions easier
to fill. 

I will continue on as Project Leader if this is the case..... my call
to you is basically to change our vision from trying to become something for
the masses, to becoming our own distro. A playground that we all enjoy
maintaining, coaxing it along at whatever pace we can provide, taking any
help offered and above all having fun using what we have created!

This is an idea I can stand behind and give voice to. If there are others who
feel that we need to go another way then I would have to say that I am not
available to lead it. This is what we have discussed and the rest of the 
Project Leaders are behind me on this. I would like to post this today and 
list a few action points for the rest of the month so that we can get back on 
track. 

I would like to ask all of you to discuss this for the coming week (I will be 
out of country from 13 Dec 2002 - 17 Dec 2002), get it all out of your system 
on sm-discuss list so I can view it when I get back.

I am currently slowly getting a transition from Ryan with passwords and such. 
When that is done I will contact the necessary people to provide access where 
needed. This will take time, so please have patience.

As for the team, I have made the adjustments to the Wiki Organization Chart, 
it now shows who is PL, Sorcery Lead, and Grimoire Lead with separate entries 
for the various Grimoire Maintainers. At this time I am making contact to 
move some developers up from Assist positions to Leads, so watch the chart 
for changes and I will announce things as much as possible to sm-discuss 
list. I would like to have the transition complete by 01 Jan 2003, a fresh 
start so to speak.

OK, now for operational matters, 22 Dec 2002, Sunday meeting on #smgl-admin 
at 
the usual time of 1800 GMT. I will have to post the subjet matter at a later 
date, but it will be posted to sm-discuss after I get back and have had time 
to take into account the communities reactions. I plan to move the meeting 
schedule back to 1x per month inline with the new philosophy "Having fun with 
SourceMage!"

The only thing left to say is thank you for hanging in there, and I hope we 
can get back to enjoying what we are doing with Source Mage as it is becoming 
something to be really proud about!

For those that I will not be able to speak with, have a good holiday season, 
play safe on New Years and see you after the holidays.

-- 
/*
 * Eric D. Schabell M.Sc.
 *   Project Lead Source Mage GNU/Linux
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 *   irc.openprojects.net (#sourcemage)
 *   nick -> erics
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