Governance revisited

[Kai Blin]

On Saturday 23 September 2006 18:10, Hiji wrote:
> I think Bob, Jim and co. were very diplomatic in their recommendations, and
> I firmly believe that they symbolize the opinions of a much larger group of
> people.  I don't think they've overstepped their boundaries at all, have
> "complained" or rushed-in to proclaim that they are "know-it-alls".  What
> they do realize is that the process can be improved and have tried to
> provide recommendations.  I'm also very suprised that they have been
> accused of "trolling" when I didn't see it that way at all - I think
> someone who was "complaining" or "trolling" because their patches never/
> rarely make it in would be MUCH less constructive.  You guys, you don't
> have to be on the "defensive" because Bob, Jim, and co. are "attacking"
> you.

Well, I just fail to see some of the points. Robert Lunnon complains there is 
no appeal process about Wine patches. This is true. But most other successful 
OSS projects out there do the same. I've never seen this sort of stuff come 
up on samba-technical. Why is it a problem in Wine? "My way or the highway" 
is an accepted gouvernance model in OSS. Besides, at WineConf we had a 
consent to keep it that way.

To be frank, I didn't understand what Jim White's point was. 

>
> Watching and being on this list for a few years now, it's no secret that
> this topic has come up over and over again - clearly, they aren't the only
> ones feeling this way and the "problem" persists.  We've seen MANY
> discouraged developers leave because of situations like this, and I believe
> this hurts the project.

Can you point out a couple of those? People who send some good patches that 
didn't make it in and who left again?

> Yeah, the team can say "hey, we have no problem 
> with it", but I think that's only because those who disagree have been
> "scared away".  As far as the recommendation to fork the tree, I wouldn't
> be suprised if that happens because it's already happened once before - of
> course, relations between this team and with Transgaming aren't all that
> great; so, I doubt they would want to share their development process.

That fork was on a licensing issue. If you have a couple of hours to waste, 
it's a fun read. It had nothing to do with policy though. We're comparing 
apples and oranges here.

> I think this team has done an incredible job with Wine - heck I've made it
> a point to stop by the CodeWeavers booth the last two year at LinuxWorld to
> say how much I love the work you guys do (sometimes, I'm the only one
> there).  However, I can't help but believe that this project can evolve
> MUCH faster and better to gain the respect that it deserves.

I think the bigger issue that keeps developers away is: It's damn hard, and 
the Win32 API sucks. :) But that might be my personal opinion.

> I've been using Wine for a little over 2 years now (it's the first app I've
> ever installed on Linux, and its what kept me on Linux), but from a user's
> perspective, I have seen very little progress (and in some cases, steps
> backwards.)

Now that really can't be. I couldn't play most of my games in Wine two years 
ago, and now I can play most of them. If you don't call that progress, what 
else do you want?

> And frankly said, it really sucks to hear that the developers 
> here don't place user needs/ value higher on their priority list.  Granted,
> Wine is free software, and I could off and do my own thing, but speaking
> merely from a personal satisfaction perspective, when I develop something,
> what really makes me happy is knowing that the person using my app REALLY
> enjoys and makes use of it.  That's why it's always high on my priority
> list.  If I don't have that going for me, I have no reason to develop the
> app.

Let me answer this from my own perspective. As you can see in my signature, 
wine isn't the only FOSS project I'm working on. In fact, I only got started 
with Wine development because I was accepted into the Google Summer of Code 
2005, so I was paid to work on Wine. I worked on an obscure area of Wine, and 
I so far heard from one user who seems to need this. I sent a fix for his 
problem, but I didn't hear back from him. So obviously my personal 
satisfaction comes from getting my personnal test applications to work. (And 
the times I got paid for this, it was a job.) Now, while I don't think most 
wine developers have this background, I figure most of them work on a certain 
area to scratch an itch they're having, I wonder what's wrong about this 
policy.

>
> I just want to close with this: I'm not trolling (the team should know this
> because I've been on the list for awhile) and I certainly don't think that
> anyone else here has trolled around this thread.

You're not trolling, but you are very vague.

Cheers,
Kai

-- 
Kai Blin, <kai Dot blin At gmail Dot com>
WorldForge developer    http://www.worldforge.org/
Wine developer          http://wiki.winehq.org/KaiBlin/
--
Will code for cotton.
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