Suggestions for improvement of the emulator

[Robert Lunnon]

On Tuesday 06 September 2005 19:20, Francois Gouget wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Sep 2005, Troy Rollo wrote:
> [...]
>
> > Having to pipe all the changes through one person limits scalability.
>
> This is far from being an issue with the current number of patches. By
> the time it becomes an issue I'm sure we'll have switched to a
> distributed repository model with different maintainers for each part of
> Wine. But you also have to realise that expecting to have multiple Wine
> maintainers right now is unrealistic due to lack of volunteers with
> enough time and who would be here for the long haul.
>
> The only issue is when he takes a vacation but that's not very often.
>
<lots of stuff deleted for brevity> 

I must disagree,  the LOTM (Lord Of The Manor) governance model may work for 
an small outfit but wine has already outgrown it. I have two or three 
withheld patches which are absolute show stoppers for running wine under 
Solaris. They are withheld despite the fact they work because they were 
refused, yet every second week I am forced to work around some portability 
problem introduced by someone else - not exactly ISO9001 quality assurance.  
This causes problems for both me and the wine project because:

1. wine is NOT as portable as it should be.
2. I am forced to become the LOTM for wine under Solaris since I am currently 
the only source (I know of)  for Solaris wine.

There must have been half a dozen times where I have decided to abandon the 
wine project due to its governance model, only to be encouraged back to it by 
my customers. These days I submit my patches to comply with the LGPL, and if 
they go in all well and good, if not I no longer care... Is this how 
developers should be thinking about wine ?

It's also important to remember that many developers that contribute 
(Including myself) are volunteers, volunteers are hard to come by, but really 
easy to get rid of. You need a governance model that is not only fair and 
even handed with people, but is SEEN TO BE fair and even handed. This model 
is not that. 

Bob