[Mageia-dev] So?

[Maât]

Le 28/09/2010 21:08, Lucien-Henry Horvath a écrit :
> EN (lecteurs français, je vous conseille de lire ci-dessous)
>
> Okay, - What is the governance of this project ?
>
Hi Lucien,

As you may know (or may not) this project started rather quickly with a
great amount of energy and many positive reactions. But the plans were
not precise because people did not have the time to plan it minutely :)

So this project WILL have a public governance as stated on "New grounds"
chapter on http://mageia.org

Having a self-proclaimed board (made of the core people on whom the
distribution used to rely for building and realease roadmaps)  for the
first year while we try to make our beloved distribution survive is
something i consider neither illogical not illegitimate :)

So even if the board is not precisely named i can guess a number of
names that could appear in the list without shocking me :)

If you're old enough in mandrake/mandriva i think you can even have a
better gess :)

> I believe that the old worker of Mandriva are the most activs. But it
> is not very false when person like Mahteus (or me), are feeling a
> problem.
>
> I don't doubt that the governance of the project is not null ... But
> we, others of "who maintain the list", we don't see anything.
>
Well it's all over again the myth of the one-month-child :)

(For those who do not know about this "myth" think about this : while
one woman can have a baby in nine months, with nine women you'll never
be able to have a baby in one month ^^)

At the moment there are a very little number of "babies" : the build
system (highest priority, requires money from the donations), the web
servers ( lower priority because we have temporary replacement sites
like the blog and the root website )

These "babies" we cannot put many womens to have them... that would make
no sense to send zillions of people to bring servers in a datacenter
(and the datacenter owner would not let many enter)... same thing for
servers (even if there will be 5 or 6 in the build system) install and
configuration : a handful of sysadmins are enough for that... having a
man per keyboard key would not speed up things you can trust me :)

And before physical and software install, the design of global
architecture and proof of concept made on sandbox machines cannot be
charged on more than 2 or 3 guys :)

That's just common sense... :)

> Who is actually the captain, or most contributers ?
>
Actually we have ennael whom i consider the person currently nearest
from this idea of "captain". But at the moment, to find a place in a
datacenter, design the future build system and install a handful of rack
servers we cannot parallelize more i guess :)

And those who work on these tasks know perfectly what to do (i would bet
on that) so they do not need a "captain"

Later, the infrastructure, once up and running, will allow many people
to work simultaneously. Please just give people time to set up this
first stone of the building :)

> Who is the team who decide the rules like : to put TXT format and not
> HTML format in the mail of the list ? Or to speak only in english ? Or
> to do only RPM and not DEB ? This 3 late days, I have only seen this
> kind of movement.
>
For the first that's just a rule shared by every opensource project i
know... it's just common sense again : many people do use pure text mail
readers like mutt or pine... if you send html people will see rubbish
full of <div><div><span><ul><li><i><b><a
href="http://blahblah.blah/page">link to
read</a></b></i></li><ul></span></div></div><table><th><td>something
else to read</td><tr><td>....

And for people who use mobile mail readers, html makes emails soooo
sloooow to download :-(

For english it's again common sense as english is the lowest common
denominator for communications, hence it's a de-facto standard used in
every big opensource community :)

>
> So, I think I (and a lot of others) will take more confidence in this
> project if certain person said what they do.
>
That imho can be said without big concern...

>
> We have a wiki for write what each can do. But we have nothing for
> "institute" what will be done, when, and who do what ?
>
>
> Just a first question : when and where will be done the first meeting
> of the foundation in France ? I want participate, I will take a day of
> holidays in my company for the creation and write of the statuts of
> this foundation. But, it seems that someone is back the decision, and
> now, actually, I don't see who (or which group).
>
What foundation ? Afaik Mageia will rely on a not-for-profit dedicated
organization. Not a foundation iirc.

> Mageia will not survive if you make the sames mistake of the last
> managers of Mandriva. For me it was : decision in dark and no
> visibility to the community.
>
At the moment all the more or less important decisions have been voted
and discussed on these lists afaik (Cauldron name, logo...)

(Setting up a build system is not really a decision as we cannot work
without it. It's just rough and hard work to prepare it on sandbox
machines while waiting to have a place in a datacenter... and enough
money to buy the real servers)

> This community is not only maked from hard-coders for fun ... but also
> people not exclusively technicians but can bring a lot to a community
> (which I also learned to make ABAP / java / Ada95 10 years ago, but
> now, I am no more exactly in this job ... and can give a little part
> of me).
>
Well as said by many your (mine also i hope) and every volunteer help is
most welcome but just now at this precise minute the tasks that can be
processed are not so many and they take a fair amount of time to
complete... those involved probably sleep little and work as hard as
they can.

Once this phase is finished i guess that many more people will be able
to get in and contribute :)

Please do not make things harder for those who work on the critical path
and more unbearable the time for those who are waiting :-(

Maât