Public SourceMage Discussion List

[George Sherwood <pilot AT beernabeer.com>]

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On Sun, 04 Mar 2007 20:29:55 +0100
"Andraž 'ruskie' Levstik" <ruskie AT mages.ath.cx> wrote:

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> My few questions for the grimoire nominees.
> 
> a) New grimoire features like keywords and other sich things.
>    What do you plan on doing about them and any other new
>    features?

We need to understand the usefulness of keywords and whether it is
worth the investment in resources to fully implement.  At this time I
see it as something that was but in the grimoire without a plan to
implement in sorcery and without a full understand by developers of how
it is to be used.  At this time we don't even have a list of acceptable
keywords although it doesn't matter since it isn't implemented in
sorcery.



> 
> b) Try to unify as many BUILD/INSTALL files and systems into
>    a single default_build(something that the gnustep sections do)
>    or the new spell file inheritance scheme.
>    Your opinion on this?

If it makes the maintenance of a section easier then I am all for it.
I don't think I understand well enough what benefit this might bring to
other sections.  Exactly what gap you are trying to fill with it.


> 
> c) Maintaining of critical spells like glibc, gcc.
>    How would new versions be handled? Will you do the version bump?
>    Delegate it to someone else?

We need to find dedicated maintainers for critical spells such as you
mentioned above.  We need to ensure that whoever does that version bump
for critical spells understand the spell completely and has completed
required testing prior to release to the test grimoire.  One of the
things I feel we lost with the conversion from p4 to git was an up to
date development grimoire.  This allowed developers to easily test
critical spells before putting in the test grimoire.  We need to
develop procedures using git branches to do something similar. 


> 
> d) What's te ammount of time you could give to supporting gurus
>    with issues, questions, etc? Availability for gurus?

I will be as available as I am now. For many years now I have
maintained a presence in IRC and will continue to do so.  I will
answer all proposals and questions as quickly as possible or at least
get the message out that I have the questions and am working to find an
answer.



> 
> e) Long overdue project on the wiki:
>    http://wiki.sourcemage.org/LicenseInventory
>    Would be nice to acctually start enforcing this more and
>    try to cleanup everything.
>    Also an that same note: spellifing licenses(already have a
>    base for this).
>    Your opinion on this? Sholud we try to clean out badly licensed
>    spells as a project or leave it in a fix it as you find it state?

I personally don't feel we have the manpower to dedicate to this
license task.  If there are spells in the regular grimoire that
developers feel do not meet our definition of free they should be
brought to the attention of the grimoire or project lead for possible
removal.



> 
> f) Opinion on supporting z-rejected as a developer grimoire(getting
>    that Free mark from FSF/GNU is acctually starting to count for a
>    lot of people I talked with online when I recommended them source
>    mage. Many didn't want to use it because of that.)?
> 
I don't believe there is a large number of users waiting to start with
Sourcemage, but are holding out due to our having a z-rejected
grimoire.  I think there are as many users we would lose by not making
any of those spells available as we would gain. All of our install and
basesystem is free and we allow the users to decide on what other
types of programs to install on their computers.  I don't have any
problem with this philosophy. I do believe that we need to rethink how
we handle binary spells.  I do not believe that programs that meet
FSF/GNU guidelines should be in z-rejected based only on our providing a
binary version.  I think these could either be moved into the normal
grimoire or into a binary grimoire that we could distribute on the iso
also.

George Sherwood

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