[GNUe-dev] Re: GNUe (was 'What's up?')

[Derek Neighbors]

Jason Maas said:

> [Discussion moved from the Debian non-profit mailing list]

Sorry for delayed response on this.  I filed it in my follow up day I got
it and then forgot about it until cleaning out that folder today.

>>The big problem is we are much more like an office of developers than a
>> distributed development team.
>
> Is that just because you've chosen to use IRC and developed those habits
> or because you all live near each other and know each other face to
> face?

Because we have chosen to use IRC and developed those habits.  Very few of
us live close to each other.  However, we have built a very real community
and many of us have met in person at conferences and the likes.

>>We are not opposed to mailing lists and will respond to mails sent to
>> them, but why force developers to communicate in a way that is not
>> natural to them?
>
> I didn't mean to imply that I want to "force" the GNUe developers to do
> anything.  I was just making a suggestion based on the behavior of just
> about every other community developed OSS project out there.  I was also
> trying to explain why myself and others didn't detect much life in the
> GNUe project.  I can think of several reasons why mailing lists might be
> preferable to IRC for developer & user communication:

Yes we have a very real problem with people thinking this project is not
highly viable when it is.  The interesting thing is we actually were at
the core of a study on how to communicate in a distributed world[0].

> 1) It's normal for most other projects and what an OSS developer/user
> will
>    expect

We like to exceed expectations. :)

> 2) It's easier to keep track of threads of discussion for subscribers
> and
>    readers of the archives

I think the roles are not defined.  For people with a "lurker" interest
mail lists are great.  For people with strong vested interest they are
part of each conversation and so don't need the "snapshot" view.  We try
to make the kernel cousin as a way to give the "lurker" that view.

> 3) People tend to think more before posting and can write longer and
> more
>    developed thoughts in email

This is good in some regards, but it crushes dynamic development.  In my
experience discussing hard issues real time allows for very dynamic
innovation playing off one anothers concepts and ideas.

> 4) Mailing lists tend to stay on topic better than IRC (from my limited
>    IRC experience)

Yes.  They are also much more dry and you don't get to understand peoples
personality and lives.  Making the "connected" feeling much less.

> 5) You can keep up with the discussion regardless of what time zone you
>    live in

Well the trick here is to just not sleep.  That's what Vee does. ;)

>>This is a longer response that I don't have full time for as I spent a
>> good deal of time last night (or recently) talking to someone about
>> this.  The two big reasons.  Objects are great for somethings, but are
>> tremendously poor at others.
>
> What sorts of things are they poor at?  I don't doubt you, I'd just to
> have a little bit more of an idea of what you're referring to.

There are many issues.  It is probably easier to google for object vs
relational database.  One thing that always bugged me about object
approach was lack of any semblence of a standard.  I believe that OMG has
started to address this.  Also many SQL queries that are very quick are
painfully slow in an object system.  That said many SQL queries that are
tedious and repetitive are simplistic to program and quick to retrieve in
the object model.[1]

-Derek

[0] http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=958164&dl=ACM&coll=portal
[1] http://www.inconcept.com/JCM/March2004/Pascal.htm