Forum OpenACS Development: Response to OpenACS 4 Search Integration, what should it look like?
LaGuardia, where I caught the 3:30pm Delta shuttle to Boston. The
turbulence in flight and 45-minute runway delay should have alerted me
to the pending flamefest in OpenACS-land, but I didn't take notice. I
spent time with friends, and at 11pm, Dr. Wolfman himself interrupted
my brilliant game of pool: "So what's up with the community and this
'sex on friday' thing?" I chose to temporarily ignore my email and get
some sleep.
So, now that I am rested and have read through the volumes of
contributions, I have a few important, harshly honest points to make:
- Don has been doing an incredible job leading OpenACS 4.x. Much
better than I did on 3.x, and much better than many "professional"
project managers I've worked with. Doubts as to my support of Don's
approach in resolving OpenACS 4.x issues are wholly unfounded.
- Don's style is direct, but honest. I appreciate that, because I know
that if I slip up, I might get a nastygram from Don, and that keeps
me on my toes. In fact, it helps bypass the politics and get to the
meat of the issue. If the meat of the issue involves significantly
readjusting expectations, then we don't beat around the bush.
- Most successful open-source projects are led by a small set of
individuals with strong opinions who aren't afraid to put their foot
down. The "bazaar" model is fun marketing, but it's not exactly
correct (oh no! The OSI black helicopters are on their way...). This
means that sometimes people in the community will not be
satisfied. No matter what model you choose, that's going to be the
case. In this model, at least the project has a direction and vision
offered by people who have time and resources to actively
contribute.
- However, in order to perform efficiently, one must attempt to
decentralize the effort to a certain degree. Mostly, this is done by
pushing the overhead of communication and management as far away
from the center as possible. When I managed OpenACS 3.x, I
repeatedly ignored the first email I received from new potential
contributors. I would wait until the second reminder email, and then
add them to SourceForge and respond with instructions. At first, it
was because I was overwhelmed. Eventually, I realized that this was a
good process in general (gasp! I did it on purpose...) because it
filtered out those unwilling to put in the extra effort to retry,
adapt, and generally be pro-active about lowering the communication
overhead.
- Jerry, I responded positively to your initial posting because I
think you could be an excellent contributor to OpenACS
core. I like a lot of your ideas, and many here agree that the
quality of what you produce is quite high. However, I agree with Don
that you've not helped us on the communication overhead issue. Your
contributions are currently standalone, following your own
priorities, and any attempt you've made at integration with the team
involves a suggestion that the management process change. Sorry, too
much overhead. We'd love to get your contributions, but we can't
seem to find a way to do it without taking on huge amounts of
coordination work on our end. This is why it doesn't feel that
you're a team member, because it seems you're working on your own,
following your own track, and leaving us to figure out how the heck
to make use of what you've produced. If you can help us by
taking some of this work on, by finding ways to contribute without
requesting too much time from others, I think we'd begin to see the
light at the end of this flamefest tunnel.
- Please refrain from making statements of the "go have sex"
kind. I'm not about to censor anyone, but I would like to encourage
people to channel their frustration in more productive
ways.
- The reason people bring up the issue of "stepping down," frankly, is
that talk is cheap, and we are all volunteers with other interests,
too. I met Don through his bboard code. Don met me through some
code/posting interaction. The mutual respect we have is not based on
talk, it's based on actions of collaboration and true attempts to
work things out. I don't care how often I'm outvoted by Don, as long
as we discuss the issues at hand. The moment it seems that someone
is more interested in *their* point of view than in contributing to
the community, I tend to stop listening.
Thus, follow Roberto's recommendation. Take all that energy, that time
you have to post to the discussion forum, and find a way in which *you*
can contribute more or less within the current structure. Use the
gatekeepers as coordinators, but try not to impose tons of additional
management work because of some brilliant idea you have, even if
you're Einstein.
Okay. I'm taking another shuttle back to NYC in a few hours. It's
Friday. I hope everyone takes some time to enjoy themselves in
whatever manner they choose to.
