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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Bugs against the Essen branch
From:       Thomas Zander <zander () kde ! org>
Date:       2010-09-23 19:58:24
Message-ID: 201009232158.24771.zander () kde ! org
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On Thursday 23. September 2010 19.59.11 Cyrille Berger wrote:
> > - our release schedule does not fit with Nokia's, let's create a branch
> > so they can continue to develop features.
> >
> >   Yes it's open source and nobody can force anybody to work on something
> >he
> >
> > is not interrested in. But then, why do we bother with a release schedule
> > and freeze periods,.... In my mind, those things are there because it is
> > good practice in the community to try to concentrate your time and effort
> > during these periods at solving problems. Nobody forces you to, but then
> > again, nobody forces you to leave your seat in the bus to the old person,
> > it is just something you do.
> 
> I don't understand this... We are moving to git for its "easy" branching 
> capabilities, and yet, the people who are the most supporting are opposing
> our  current branch... It is going to get worse in the future...

As someone that has been working in his day job on Git for the last 3 years I 
think I can add some details to answer your worry;
the fact that people branch is a given, its healthy and people will have 
branches that gets merged after a while, and will have branches that end up 
being deleted. Normal life.
The main branch still has a freeze period that everyone observes; within QtDF 
during the freeze period people don't work on new features, they fix bugs. 
Everyone feels the pressure for the upcoming release and if an urgent bug comes 
in they tend to drop everything and fix it. People are proud of their work and a 
regression is something they feel personally as a call to action.

Starting a koffice feature branch at the moment the schedule says "lets focus on 
fixing bugs" is a signal that people rather work on features than on fixing bugs. 
To add to the foundation of that signal is that this is the second release that 
this happens.
Is it wrong? Its about as wrong as you not volunteering your seat to an elderly 
lady in a full buss.

> > - our API does not fit a yet unreleased project of Nokia, let's pay some
> > of the contributors to just change the API the way we want without
> > having to clarify in detail the use case.
> >
> >   Yes, it was discussed during a sprint where everybody of the community
> >
> > was invited. However, not everybody could attend and the resulting design
> > was not presented to the community at large with the grounds for changing
> > the API. The changes were (if I understood properly, so correct me if I
> > am wrong here) done, discussed and approved under the sponsorship of
> > Nokia. Given the people involved, I have no doubt that the design is
> > sound and will improve KOffice. However, the process seems to me like
> > first class citizens doing stuff among themselves, which the second
> > class citizens just have to accept as good face value.
> 
> Seriously, the change has follow one of our usual path, it has been posted
> for  review on this list, and Thomas woke up a month later when Boudewijn
> added some documentation to it. In other word, the patch has followed an
> establish KDE and KOffice process, in other word, no rule has been bend
> for that patch ! 

I was a participant in this topic and you name me directly so I'll add that I 
found no reason to go into the history too deeply; its more productive to avoid 
a pissing match. I just want to state that your opinion of it does not depict 
the history as it unfolded. But more importantly; it is not about two people or 
their communication. So I'll let it go.
Pierre wrote a great comment on that thread; 
  «However, let's take a complete outsider company, who would want to develop
  an application (closed source at least temporary) based on our libs. If they
  would come asking (with a patch) to change our core API, we probably would
  ask them for some example usecases.»
We would have, so why haven't we?

Did rules get broken? Did someone do something wrong? Its about as wrong as you 
coming home at midnight and seeing a broken window and lights inside at your 
neighbor and ignoring it.

As a postscript;
I see various people on this thread countering Pierre's points. But please note 
that nobody has been accusing anyone of breaking rules etc.

The point raised is different. Lets focus on that. I'll refer to Pierres mail to 
state that point better than I can.
-- 
Thomas Zander
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