[Mageia-discuss] [ul-developers] Re: [Cooker] Transparency & open invitation to a united foundation..? [Was: forking mandriva]

[Paul Grinberg]

On Tue, Sep 21, 2010 at 4:30 AM, Per Øyvind Karlsen
<peroyvind at mandriva.org>wrote:

> 2010/9/21 Wolfgang Bornath <molch.b at googlemail.com>:
> > 2010/9/21 Per Øyvind Karlsen <peroyvind at mandriva.org>:
> >>
> >> Oh well, I fear that this I with this post and the proposition might
> >> just be flamed to death no matter how sane and justified I may find
> >> this that others might consider a flamebait pipedream, or perhaps just
> >> ignored which wouldn't surprise me that much either, but as there
> >> might just be slight chance of constructive discussion taking place
> >> and something of use to someone rather than a new round with
> >> distribution of blame and angry voices, I take my chances in the
> >> spirit of the greater good for everyone. :o)
> >
> > Hmm, now here we have our old Per Øyvind back, while his person was
> > occupied by a demon lately?
> Nah, he just rather felt the motivation and ideas about organization
> being too different and in contrast, getting in the way of any mutual
> goals and hopes, making them irrelevant. But I'd rather focus on
> bringing these in line and of mutual interest as well now rather than
> criticizing further. ;)
> >
> > What you propose makes the same sense as it made a couple of months
> > ago, but the circumstances have changed a lot meanwhile. Yoou can't
> > turn back the pages and read again like "Forget what was, here is a
> > born again world". Now such a system as you suggest will depend not
> > only on technical and economical questions as it was some time ago but
> > also on how much trust you can still have / want to have in the
> > current powers at Mandriva as well as how much motivation the makers
> > of this fork can show to cooperate with a company which has treated
> > them as seen in the previous months. This can only be answered by
> > those people, not by any other.
> Well, you and me both has managed to stay focused on and more care
> around the community part despite getting canned from the company
> since quite a while ago, and even both had our quarrels with some of
> the community as well, independent of our employment, we're still
> around. Personally I'd feel rather hypocritical otherwise as any
> claims and beliefs of mine about Mandriva Linux being a community
> distribution wouldn't be consistent with letting my professional
> relations interfer with community involvement. I'd experience it as if
> I were setting myself and my own personal feelings towards the
> employer in that context, especially if imposing it on the community
> and allow for it to dictate their direction..
>
> I also feel that the claim about all talents and core developers of
> the distribution being quite unfair to those people employed at
> Conectiva, which AFAIK still has more people despite all it's previous
> departures (which to my understanding most of likely wouldn't have
> left either under the current situation where remaining staff chose to
> stay) assigned to work on the community distribution than Edge-IT had
> when liquidated. This kinda suggests a notion of the whole
> distribution and anything of importance revolves around these
> relatively few people at Edge-IT, and that the staff at Conectiva,
> despite being made up of more people, they're less important.. Same
> can be said for community contributors..
>
> So, is this the case? If it's not, then there shouldn't be anything in
> the way of continuing involvement in the community and help improve it
> and setting up a community organization together with and around it,
> after all, we're grownups and should know better than taking out our
> grudges on others..
> I don't really like implying such and feel uncomfortable about raising
> the questions, but there's several details concerning this that raises
> the question on where you're actually acting in the community's best
> interest or not, if your intentions really are, then I urge you to
> reconsider participate in this attempt on establishing a dialogue..
>
> Certainly there can be other technical differences and desires
> motivating the fork as well, making it more desirable for both parties
> and allowing for them different focus and priorities without being at
> conflict, but this doesn't have to mean that a split has to happen in
> the community nor that we cannot work together on creating an
> organization together and collaborate rather than burning bridges and
> creating grounds for controversy and hostility. As the interest and
> desires expressed by Matthew and Unity Linux, and their efforts all
> along has shown, there is room for diversity and different focus while
> at the same time actively working on improving relations and how to
> better complement eachother.
> As there's obviously interest for these things in both the Unity and
> Mandriva community, why wouldn't there be so in the Mageia community?
> If there's not, it wouldn't seem very professional of you, and
> certainly not community friendly nor in the community's best interest,
> would it?
> The official news and strategy announced by Mandriva certainly doesn't
> seem to  rumours on bad intentions threatening the community or the
> distribution's future either, so that shouldn't be the concern
> either...
> >
> > And of course it depends on how the powers at Mandriva (I do not mean
> > Laprevote but rather his peers) will see such an obligation, which it
> > will be for them. Would they see it as a necessary move, I mean
> > necessary for their plans, not ours? As we do not know their plans we
> > can't even speculate about that. I remember an investor talking to a
> > former member of the Mandriva board, advising him to get rid of the
> > enduser community because they only keep the company away from
> > important work. I don't say that all investors think like that, but
> > it's a good example.
> Then I guess we should be happy that investor is no longer on the board. ;)
> But certainly with regards to the company and related to the changes
> in it's management, verifying their current position on the matter and
> ensure their actual interest would certainly be useful before assuming
> or expecting anything. If we have it and a good dialogue is
> established, then much can be done from there.
> >
> > Of course, a Mandriva company which really means to carry out what
> > Laprevote mentioned in his motivation "news", a Mandriva company which
> > starts being communicative and transparent where it is possible, a
> > Mandriva company which starts doing what it always claimed to be their
> > commitment ("we are committed to the community"), this could be a good
> > partner, /me thinks, day dreaming.
> Yupp, and we can only find out by giving the chance and try contribute
> to this ourself, it's a two-way street after all.. :)
> > But as I wrote: I have no voice in this anyway.
> Yupp, but we can at least hope to influence in the best interest, for
> Mageia I personally didn't really have any real knowledge of before
> after it's announcement, so I'm not expecting to even have much of a
> voice in by myself, yet I'm hoping logic, reason and mutual benefits
> and goals will come out winning in the end.. :)
> >
> > BTW: I thought the chief in hugs was François Bancilhon? :)
> Well, I'm his secret twin, and as he weren't granted this overwhelming
> responsibility at the first assembly meeting, he has to share the
> duties with me, tipsy or not. ;)
>
> --
> Hugziez&kizzez,
> Your BFF <3
> Per Øyvind
>
>
I am coming in a bit cold into this conversation. Frankly, I am not even
clear on what this discussion is even trying to achieve, so please forgive
me if I steer this off topic.

What I think is being discussed here is the desire to join the various
communities, at least on a certain level, in an attempt to make
collaborative work easier, if not on a daily basis, then at least on a
roadmap planning basis. Having been part of two MDV derivative developments,
I have come to accept what I believe to be inherent truths governing any
such effort:

   - it is impossible to satisfy everyone all the time. As long as there are
   multiple people involved in a community, there will always be diverging
   opinions. In large part, it is these ideological disagreements which drive
   the communities to fraction. Trying to get everyone on the same page is a
   vein effort. The basis for any collaborative work has to be the underlying
   understanding that people have their own reasons for doing what they want to
   do. Others may not agree with those reasons. Those reasons may not even be
   expressed clearly enough to formulate a proper opinion about them. The
   bottom line is that communities have to accept this inevitability and work
   with it instead of around it.
   - nominal participation does not constitute joint development. It takes
   more than just an occasional email or attendance of a meeting to claim that
   there is "participation".
   - there must be numerous participants. Having just one or two delegates
   simply does not provide enough penetration across the development
   communities to be effective. For example, personal motives can come in the
   way, availability of the delegate may be limited due to life events, etc. In
   order to guarantee successful sharing across communities, there must be more
   than a couple of people sharing the information.
   - every participant on all sides must be empowered to contribute to the
   decisions. Clearly, this has to be governed by some guidelines. Otherwise,
   this may become a free-for-all mess. However, if the contributing members of
   the individual distributions don't feel that they have influence over the
   partner communities, then the entire communities will drift, or worst still,
   rip apart.

I am 100% for transparency in development and collaborative work. But I do
feel that in order for any such efforts to be successful, the items on the
above list have to be addressed first. In my mind, the success of any
attempt to unite effort will depend on the success of addressing these
topics first.

Just my 2 cents,
Paul (gri6507).
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