Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Andrew Stitt <afrayedknot AT thefrayedknot.armory.com>]

On Mon, Jan 01, 2007 at 05:52:06PM +0500, Alexander Tsamutali wrote:
> Our main problems, IMHO:
<snip>
> * Buggy grimoire
> * Inconsistency, sometimes unneeded complexity in development
I think the latter is one of the main causes of the former. People spend
a lot of time working on more complex bugs (which are often more like
features) than working on the simple ones. Of course, people work on
what they want to work on. So this is a touchy subject and can alienate
people who have sound (possibly personal) reasons for working on those
types of bugs.

> Currently we have no news, for visitors it means we have no
> development activities.

So write some news. :-)
The problem I found with "this week in smgl", was it was difficult to
write the news week after week when there wasn't any. We have to make
news too.

I think that our use of mailing lists isnt going to stop, and so we may
as well make our main page a view into the mailing lists. Then its having
a news column is less of a priority.

Or some of us could start blogging and the main page will just aggregate
developer blogs ;-)

(yes yes, i know, blags suck)

> 
> Currently we have ~1000 open grimoire bugs in bugzilla which is tooo
> big for ~5500 spells. Almost every new user has some problems,
> sometimes very serious problems. We need to release and maintain
> really _stable_ grimoire, to improve user experience.

To be fair, the grimoires are quite a bit more stable than they were 2
or 3 years ago. Certainly there's room for improvement, but we've been
saying the grimoire has been buggy for years. I dont think we should
overlook the efforts many people have made to make things more stable.

> 
> So what do you think about? How to improve our distro? I have some
> proposals which i'll post later.
> 

I've made my opinion on this known many times:
ISOs, we need more attention paid to ISO development and a more frequent
iso development schedule. ISO's are the only thing we produce that
distrowatch and other main linux distro websites will mention.
More news on other sites means more traffic to our site. More
traffic -> more installs -> more users -> more developers.

--

I think the main problem we're facing is that we lack developer resources
to fix everything that needs fixing.

I frequently think about this problem. My conclusion at this point is
I think we lack a consistent developer-wide view on what our goals as
a project are as a project. Moreover, how best to achieve those goals.

I think fundamentally everyone participating in our community wants
sourcemage to "not suck". After that people diverge on what not sucking
means, and what not sucking should accomplish.

Its possible some people dont think smgl sucks as badly as others,
and to them, they're okay with using smgl as a home for their pet projects
and innovations, and they're okay with smgl staying a niche distro. Some
others have bigger views for smgl. Perhaps an anonymous poll can help
gauge the community interest.

For me, and probably you Alex, I think the best way to make sourcemage
not suck, is to make it not suck enough so that we get more
developers. Those developers can then help make more stuff not suck.
Leading to yet more developers (who make more things not suck), this
creates a positive feedback loop.

I dont know if everyone agrees with that approach though. Or if theres
another, better approach.

If we assume consensus with that approach, then the question
becomes, what do we make not suck first? Isos? The grimoire? The
website? Sorcery UI? Realistically we only have resources for one at a
time, and experience shows that everyone needs to be on-board for it
to work. We need multiple people who are passionate about that goal
driving it forward. If theres only one person driving the issue, he'll
get burned out sooner or later, or real life priorities will take charge
(as I've learned from personal experience).

So,
step 1: pick a project "strategy" for achieving a state of not-sucking
step 2: what is the first concrete step we can take for that strategy
Once step 2 is done, repeat step 2 w/ s/first/next/

I think the hardest part will be reaching a consensus on the strategy,
and what the subsequent action items will be.

-Andrew

-- 
_________________________________________________________________________
| Andrew D. Stitt  | acedit at armory.com    | astitt at sourcemage.org | 
| irc: afrayedknot | Sorcery Team Lead       |      ftp://t.armory.com/ |
| 1024D/D39B096C   | 76E4 728A 04EE 62B2 A09A 96D7 4D9E 239B D39B 096C  |
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