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Note what happens when things are kept closed... :)
The following is the thread so far, as seen on e-development (Enlightenment).
The subject refers to the fact that Raster's PC was apparently dropped in
transit from the outback to RedHat. Bye-bye hard-drives... :(
Anyway, what I want to point out (and I need to remind myself of too, every
once in a while), is that the closed, 'cathedral' method is not going to work
for this project. This project is a 'bazaar'. Read more about this at
http://www.ccil.org/~esr/writings/cathedral.html. Enlightenment is on the
edge of becoming a relative 'oligarchy' (defined by arma as a multi-person
monarchy, or committee if you like :), as there are only two coders who
consider taking fixes from people every once in a while. Apparently the same
happened to GCC, hence the appearance of EGCS.
This applies to us in that we need to be careful to keep the 'masses'
(seul-project) informed, and not in the dark. We all need to keep that in
mind as we discuss things, and keep reminding each other of that. This
doesn't come automatically, we'll have to work on it.
Without further ado:
----------
From: kwrohrer@enteract.com
Subject: re: Rasterman's poor PC
To: e-develop@rasterman.com
Date: Thu, 25 Dec 1997 22:10:30 -0600 (CST)
There is something to be said for an open development model, wherein the
program doesn't spend months in the middle of a transition so thorough
that nobody but the inner cabal can do anything productive towards
development for it.
That half of said inner cabal spends money in anticipation of hardware
loss during shipping, but neither ensures nor properly backs up the data,
is not a terribly good sign either.
I don't know if it's just me, but the whole philosophy of Enlightenment
(as exhibited so far) seems a bit form-over-function. That, paired with
"I'm going to do a total rewrite and you can't help, but here's a non-
playable demo" just seems rather, dare I say it, 31337.
I'm not asking anyone to become Linus Torvalds, but a good, modular,
forward-looking design that doesn't have to be totally rewritten twice
a year could take advantage of most or all of the people I've seen
volunteer to do stuff, might well attract more users, and would almost
certainly yield a stable product a lot sooner...
Don't get me wrong: Enlightenment represents a lot of good work, a
throwaway initial version is a generally accepted software engineering
practice, and I don't necessarily think I could do better. At the
same time, Enlightenment could have been better today than the sum
of all the work Mandrake and Rasterman put into it...and it could
also be moving forward at faster than the apparent standstill it
seems to currently enjoy.
Keith (read http://www.ccil.org/~esr/writings/cathedral.html)
----------
From: raster@redhat.com
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 10:55:08 -0500 (EST)
Subject: re: Rasterman's poor PC
To: kwrohrer@enteract.com
Cc: e-develop@rasterman.com
On 25 Dec, kwrohrer@enteract.com shouted:
-> There is something to be said for an open development model, wherein
the
-> program doesn't spend months in the middle of a transition so thorough
-> that nobody but the inner cabal can do anything productive towards
-> development for it.
thats what E is.. mandrake is working on code, so am I.. to date we
have had offers frm people, but nothing concrete.. no-one has joined
the team and become a member. I have released demo code and thats the
only code i got back.
-> That half of said inner cabal spends money in anticipation of hardware
-> loss during shipping, but neither ensures nor properly backs up the data,
-> is not a terribly good sign either.
um.. i didi back up some.. the ONLY mehtod of backup available was ftp..
and the only way that coudl get out was paying $1/hr to upload it to the
usa at about 500 bytes per secodn cause the isp was so slow..a nd it was
the cheapest isp int he area. Floppies are just useless for backup.. about
30% of floppies i use get errors ont hem immediately. My zip drive burnt
out and i couldne use that.. basically i backued up some stuff, but i
could nto backup 100's of Mb of shit. I know about backu.. I know what can
happen.. and i did my best.
-> I don't know if it's just me, but the whole philosophy of Enlightenment
-> (as exhibited so far) seems a bit form-over-function. That, paired with
yes? and? I like it that way. If you don't go use fvwm. I'm nto forcing
you to. If you're serious you'll actually pitch and and JOIN the
development team.. not jsut ask for features all the time.. the rewrite
is necessary becuase the old data structs and model are insufficient
for much further expansion.. and so i'm releasign demos.. peole are
free to add features and send patches! please do!
-> "I'm going to do a total rewrite and you can't help, but here's a non-
-> playable demo" just seems rather, dare I say it, 31337.
Well have it your way. write yer own wm then.
-> I'm not asking anyone to become Linus Torvalds, but a good, modular,
-> forward-looking design that doesn't have to be totally rewritten twice
-> a year could take advantage of most or all of the people I've seen
-> volunteer to do stuff, might well attract more users, and would almost
-> certainly yield a stable product a lot sooner...
Um MAYBE you didnt read anything but if i quite the enlightenment
website ont he main page:
"Enlightenment is a WORK IN PROGRESS and as a result is buggy. It can
crash, it can mis-behave, or even not function at all. This is life on the
Bleeding Edge."
I have stated many times Dr also means that the right is reserevd to
completely rip it apart and redo it differently.
-> Don't get me wrong: Enlightenment represents a lot of good work, a
-> throwaway initial version is a generally accepted software engineering
and thats why there's a rewrite... and thats why the webpage above says
what it does and all versions are marked with "DR" ..
-> practice, and I don't necessarily think I could do better. At the
-> same time, Enlightenment could have been better today than the sum
-> of all the work Mandrake and Rasterman put into it...and it could
-> also be moving forward at faster than the apparent standstill it
-> seems to currently enjoy.
Well lets see.. if you get thrown into the bush/forest with minimal net
connects, then have to pack up and move across tothe other side of the
world, lose your only machine... it sort of slows things down. I have
refused to work on the old E versiosn becuase the design is flaweed..
i'm not goign to throw away my valuable time into somehting that is
going to get trashed anyway.
I'm considering a few new design ideas for more modularity right now..
and thats all i can seriously do till i get a new machine i can work on
E on.. the data loss isnt that bad.. the most sensitve and important
stuff was backed up via ftp, but i lost a usable machine. I lost a
system i spend 100's of hours customising to my likes and needs.
-> Keith (read http://www.ccil.org/~esr/writings/cathedral.html)
----------
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 09:13:07 -0700 (MST)
From: AzCaPpY <azcappy@psychobabble.dyn.ml.org>
To: raster@redhat.com
Cc: kwrohrer@enteract.com, e-develop@rasterman.com
Subject: re: Rasterman's poor PC
Some people can do nothing but complain... Raster: You and mandrake have
done a fantastic job with E. I love it dearly. I am truly sorry to hear of
your box' demise. But stick in there. There are a lot of people out here
who love what you have done. But as they say... there are always some bad
apples in the barrel. I agree that this jerk should go and run fvwm. He
obviously can't appreciate E and it's many wonderful features.
If you have trouble getting another machine together... let me know. I
have a closet full of motherboards, CPUs and other parts. Just mail me an
address and a list of what you are needing and I will ship them to you if
I have them. They are collecting dust here.
Take care and good luck Raster
On Fri, 26 Dec 1997 raster@redhat.com wrote:
> On 25 Dec, kwrohrer@enteract.com shouted:
[ CUT!!! ]
----------
From: kwrohrer@enteract.com
Subject: Re: Rasterman's poor PC
To: raster@redhat.com
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 17:42:33 -0600 (CST)
Cc: e-develop@rasterman.com
And lo, raster@redhat.com saith unto me:
> On 25 Dec, kwrohrer@enteract.com shouted:
> -> There is something to be said for an open development model, wherein the
> -> program doesn't spend months in the middle of a transition so thorough
> -> that nobody but the inner cabal can do anything productive towards
> -> development for it.
> thats what E is.. mandrake is working on code, so am I.. to date we
> have had offers frm people, but nothing concrete.. no-one has joined
> the team and become a member. I have released demo code and thats the
> only code i got back.
I recall at least a couple people asking for features and offering to
do them, told not to bother doing anything with 0.13 because you were
going to change so much their patches were useless anyway. I seem to
recall this attitude from either the website, the docs, or the 0.14
announcements too...
> backu.. I know what can happen.. and i did my best.
Well, I suggest you scavenge what you can from your old PC and use the
excess funds (or the drop in costs between what it was insured for and
what similar parts cost now) to get yourself a decent tape drive. :-)
Even if I had Bill Gates' income, I wouldn't consider a Zip drive for
full backups of anything... (Though work on Linux backup software
may distract me from X and/or Linux kernel development...but tar
is enough, for now.)
> -> I don't know if it's just me, but the whole philosophy of Enlightenment
> -> (as exhibited so far) seems a bit form-over-function. That, paired with
> yes? and? I like it that way. If you don't go use fvwm. I'm nto forcing
> you to. If you're serious you'll actually pitch and and JOIN the
> development team.. not jsut ask for features all the time.. the rewrite
> is necessary becuase the old data structs and model are insufficient
> for much further expansion.. and so i'm releasign demos.. peole are
> free to add features and send patches! please do!
Right now, I am still using fvwm2 and a few Eterms; my major E focus now
is poking around through the Imlib, Eterm and (after some money and
some O'Reilly books) XFree86 source code to see who's spending ten
seconds paging the full-screen Eterm background in (then repainting the
text!) when the app should just be paging in the image (if that), then
re-tiling it (then repainting the text). Also on my list is writing
memory defragmentation support into Linux 2.1.76 or so, so that running
heavy memory users (e.g. Netscape, xv, E) doesn't cost my machine the
ability to reliably defragment NFS packets (or realize it can't and
drop the things) within a few seconds of reception.
> -> "I'm going to do a total rewrite and you can't help, but here's a non-
> -> playable demo" just seems rather, dare I say it, 31337.
> Well have it your way. write yer own wm then.
Naah. So far the only thing the E suite has over fvwm2 and stock X is
glitz and excessive memory consumption. I'd switch to KDE (also somewhat
piggy on memory) if kpanel could Swallow things... Besides, I'm a few
O'Reilly books short of the X knowlege I'd need to write my own, and I'm
not adverse to starting from a working body of code like fvwm2 or KDE...
Ripping out the development team and starting from scratch, now that has a
certain amount of appeal... Naah. Nobody's doing that, and now's no time
to start.
> I have
> refused to work on the old E versiosn becuase the design is flaweed..
> i'm not goign to throw away my valuable time into somehting that is
> going to get trashed anyway.
I don't know how fundamental the changes you plan are, and restarting
from scratch once or twice is one thing...but repeatedly starting from
scratch, and working on more features at a time than you can concisely
relate, are both formulae for disaster. Knowing something you changed
recently caused a new problem is hard to debug in proportion to the size
of the unstable code...
> I'm considering a few new design ideas for more modularity right now..
> and thats all i can seriously do till i get a new machine i can work on
> E on.. the data loss isnt that bad.. the most sensitve and important
> stuff was backed up via ftp, but i lost a usable machine. I lost a
> system i spend 100's of hours customising to my likes and needs.
I'm beginning to suspect that you two really *are* the only people doing
much work on Enlightenment (list of credits in the README
notwithstanding)...
Who flames me, and what for, will prove this suspicion true or false.
Keith ("Illumination" would've been a more accurate name)
----------
From: raster@redhat.com
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 19:20:32 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Re: Rasterman's poor PC
To: kwrohrer@enteract.com
Cc: e-develop@rasterman.com
On 26 Dec, kwrohrer@enteract.com shouted:
-> I recall at least a couple people asking for features and offering to
-> do them, told not to bother doing anything with 0.13 because you were
-> going to change so much their patches were useless anyway. I seem to
-> recall this attitude from either the website, the docs, or the 0.14
-> announcements too...
yes, becuase thats the truth.. why should people wast time on somehtng
that will have to be thrown away?
-> > backu.. I know what can happen.. and i did my best.
-> Well, I suggest you scavenge what you can from your old PC and use the
-> excess funds (or the drop in costs between what it was insured for and
-> what similar parts cost now) to get yourself a decent tape drive. :-)
-> Even if I had Bill Gates' income, I wouldn't consider a Zip drive for
-> full backups of anything... (Though work on Linux backup software
-> may distract me from X and/or Linux kernel development...but tar
-> is enough, for now.)
Who do that when now i have access at redhat to burn regular cd dumps
of stuff on my dirve? :) before i had no access to such facilites.. NOW
i do.
-> > -> I don't know if it's just me, but the whole philosophy of Enlightenment
-> > -> (as exhibited so far) seems a bit form-over-function. That, paired with
-> > yes? and? I like it that way. If you don't go use fvwm. I'm nto forcing
-> > you to. If you're serious you'll actually pitch and and JOIN the
-> > development team.. not jsut ask for features all the time.. the rewrite
-> > is necessary becuase the old data structs and model are insufficient
-> > for much further expansion.. and so i'm releasign demos.. peole are
-> > free to add features and send patches! please do!
-> Right now, I am still using fvwm2 and a few Eterms; my major E focus now
-> is poking around through the Imlib, Eterm and (after some money and
-> some O'Reilly books) XFree86 source code to see who's spending ten
-> seconds paging the full-screen Eterm background in (then repainting the
-> text!) when the app should just be paging in the image (if that), then
-> re-tiling it (then repainting the text). Also on my list is writing
-> memory defragmentation support into Linux 2.1.76 or so, so that running
-> heavy memory users (e.g. Netscape, xv, E) doesn't cost my machine the
-> ability to reliably defragment NFS packets (or realize it can't and
-> drop the things) within a few seconds of reception.
okay.. well off you go and code.. :)
-> Naah. So far the only thing the E suite has over fvwm2 and stock X is glitz
-> and excessive memory consumption. I'd switch to KDE (also somewhat
-> piggy on memory) if kpanel could Swallow things... Besides, I'm a few
-> O'Reilly books short of the X knowlege I'd need to write my own, and
-> I'm not adverse to starting from a working body of code like fvwm2 or
-> KDE...
no yer not.. o'reillies are pretty useless.. for writing hard core X
and wm's. sm's are'nt documented much.. even the orielly states that
onyl a few "crazy" epoep will every write them, so it doesnt say much..
and what it does say is pretty much useless.
-> I don't know how fundamental the changes you plan are, and restarting
-> from scratch once or twice is one thing...but repeatedly starting from
-> scratch, and working on more features at a time than you can concisely
-> relate, are both formulae for disaster. Knowing something you changed
-> recently caused a new problem is hard to debug in proportion to the size
-> of the unstable code...
Um.. I've staretd ONCe from scratch.. this time. the lats time i
tinkeered wiht fvwm.. and thgats was all.. peopel asked for it so i
gave it to them.. it was then i decided i'd write a WM for real.
-> > I'm considering a few new design ideas for more modularity right now..
-> > and thats all i can seriously do till i get a new machine i can work on
-> > E on.. the data loss isnt that bad.. the most sensitve and important
-> > stuff was backed up via ftp, but i lost a usable machine. I lost a
-> > system i spend 100's of hours customising to my likes and needs.
-> I'm beginning to suspect that you two really *are* the only people doing
-> much work on Enlightenment (list of credits in the README notwithstanding)...
-> Who flames me, and what for, will prove this suspicion true or false.
->
-> Keith ("Illumination" would've been a more accurate name)
----------
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 17:36:03 -0700 (MST)
From: AzCaPpY <azcappy@psychobabble.dyn.ml.org>
To: raster@redhat.com
Cc: kwrohrer@enteract.com, e-develop@rasterman.com
Subject: Re: Rasterman's poor PC
I'm pretty much fed up with this idiots rants. Leave it to an idiot to
kick someone when they are down. I think it is tragic what happened to
Rasters' box... But I think it is even more tragic when an ungrateful
moron has to compound it and make it worse with his useless bullshit. I
think it is time for little Keithie baby to be banned from this list. He
obviously has nothing constructive to add to E. All he can do is complain
and tear it down. Anyone second the motion?
AzCaPpY (aka another Keith who is ashamed to share a name with such a
moron)
On Fri, 26 Dec 1997 raster@redhat.com wrote:
> On 26 Dec, kwrohrer@enteract.com shouted:
[ CUT!!! ]
----------
From: Mark Rorabaugh <mark@2rad.net>
Subject: Re: Rasterman's poor PC
To: azcappy@psychobabble.dyn.ml.org
Date: Fri, 26 Dec 1997 22:07:41 -0500 (EST)
Cc: raster@redhat.com, kwrohrer@enteract.com, e-develop@rasterman.com
> I'm pretty much fed up with this idiots rants. Leave it to an idiot to
> kick someone when they are down. I think it is tragic what happened to
> Rasters' box... But I think it is even more tragic when an ungrateful
> moron has to compound it and make it worse with his useless bullshit. I
> think it is time for little Keithie baby to be banned from this list. He
> obviously has nothing constructive to add to E. All he can do is complain
> and tear it down. Anyone second the motion?
>
He is not going to be kicked off the list. If I kicked everyone who had
worthless comments, the list would contain about 6 people, and you and I
would not be on it.
I am quite sure that Raster will prolly start making network backups now
that he is in the U.S. so the issue is over.
Despite being one of raster's biggest supporters, Keith has made several
nearly valid points about code rewrites.. but one must also consider that
raster and mandrake have been writing the code, and everyone receives a
copy of the source if they download it from the home-page. I'm sure that
no one would have a problem with Keith making his own changes if he is not
content with Raster's.
Let there be peace, and let us continue with only constructive comments
and criticisms. All hugs and kisses can be made through email off the
list.
thanx,
-Mark
(List maintainer)
Erik Walthinsen - SEUL Project infrastructure/system architecture
__
/ \ omega@sequent.com Work: (503)578-5314
| | M E G A omega@omegacs.net Home: (503)281-4281
_\ /_ psu12113@odin.cc.pdx.edu Majoring in CS
SEUL: Simple End-User Linux - creating a Linux distribution
http://www.seul.org/ for the average home/office user
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