Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to Open Developer Discussions

I have no, and want no control over anyone elses project. I have been arguing the opposite, and would even take issue with Tali's seemingly benign statement that perhaps Ben could have solicited input on the portals package at an early stage. Ben has the absolute right to full control of all the projects he is working on, and anything that finds it's way to the public is a gift.

What I am saying is that design discussions and code are extremely valuable to more than those immediately involved at that point in time. I also say that developers have to communicate anyway, and that the incremental cost of placing discussion on a public bboard rather than in an email is nill. If you agree with me on those points, then I hope you'll also agree that every discussion which is syphoned away from this bboard and into private email devalues the OpenACS community.

I hesitate to mention .LRN again, as it's status as a for-client project means to me that this community has precisely zero say in it's future, but perhaps Ben is wondering what I am asking for if not for control.

Consider the state the project would now be in if at it's inception a bboard was created, either here or at OF's site, and possibly made read only to the public, and the OF developers had design and development discussions there rather than send each other email or use an internal bboard. Would .LRN now have less strong leadership or any less direction? Would it be any less of an open source project? No (in fact at this point in time .LRN is not an open source project because no code, no documentation has been released. Hence "unavailable").

A slightly cleaner way to do it would've been to solicit interest from others first, inviting people with a serious interest in contributing actively to the upgrade to join the effort. They might've gotten a couple of other folks involved at an early who would've been willing to roll up their sleeves and get down to it.

So what you're suggesting Don is that before work begins the community (made up of professional developers with other time commitments, hobyists etc., let's not foget) should be solicited for active, willing to roll up their sleeves and get down to it contributors, i.e. people who will commit to dedicating some significant ammount of time. These developers will then depart and between themselves via email or some other private means collaborate on the project for a week, month, year... Everything that is generated during the discussions -- the bugs encountered, the solutions assesed and rejected, the knowledge gained about some corner of the toolkit -- are all discarded, lost forever. During this period of private collaboration, anyone unable to meet the original commitment deadline is denied the oppertunity for involvement. When the project is complete the active developers, sleeves rolled, will present to the Community, and it will provide the thumbs up, thumbs down?

Sarcasm acknowledged, you seem to be saying that collaboration of the form I'm talking about i.e. letting people openly see what is going on, has some overhead which increases with the number of people involved, and that our Open Community System is not up to the task of facilitating that collaboration. Should we conclude from the number of participants in this thread that they are the only ones who are interested? Should we be having this discussion via email because the burden of over 100 people looking over our shoulders is holding us back?

My one and only suggestion is that if you feel as I do that design and development discussion is the valuable information which binds this community together, and that posting it to the bboard rather than keeping it private, where you are able to, is not too much of a burden, then you do so. To suggest otherwise leaves me genuinely quite puzzled.