Forum OpenACS Development: Re: OACS 6 and beyond

44: Re: OACS 6 and beyond (response to 1)

Posted by Janine Ohmer on 07/30/06 03:43 AM

In this and previous discussions about this there is always a sense that the Oracle folks are somehow freeloading, that a lack of contribution from those who use Oracle is what is causing Don to put in all these unpaid hours. But I think that is misplaced. Nothing any of us who use Oracle have done is causing Don to have to do this. The cause is the lazy arsed programmers (Simon, did I get that right? :) who are committing broken code. I fully agree with Simon - as long as the project officially supports two databases than in my opinion a submission that only works for one database contains a bug, just like any other kind of bug. Which Don has been ending up dealing with, and I also fully agree with him that he should not have to do that. But I don't think it's any more fair to say that we who use Oracle should have to pay to have other people's messes cleaned up, that we had no involvement with at all.

If you think that monetary contributions are the solution to the problem, then each person who commits code that does not support both databases should have to pay for someone to complete the work for them. Sure, it would cut down on commits, but it would be fair. More fair than any of the other suggestions so far.

The basic fact is that the rules have not changed; the project supported two databases when most people here today started contributing to it, and it still does. The fact that fewer people use Oracle these days makes it tempting, and to some acceptable, to stop spending time on it. But IMHO that does not make it right.

I support the dropping of Oracle support because I think it's the only solution to the problem that has any chance of success. But I do object to being made out to be a bad guy in this.

46: Re: Re: OACS 6 and beyond (response to 44)

Posted by Don Baccus on 07/30/06 04:12 AM

How many people who want oracle support participate in bug bashes (we've had two this month)?

How many step forward to agree to implement new features agreed upon via the TIP process for Oracle?

How many step forward to to provide test servers running various versions of Oracle they'd like to see supported?

How many agree to test beta releases on Oracle?

In absolute terms, it's not the number of hours I spend, it's the principle, the fact that I'm the only person in the community who's made the commitment to make sure oacs core releases work for at least one version of Oracle (9i).

You are essentially saying "people should not work on core unless they pledge to install, test and support Oracle as well as PG".

Despite the fact that they never use Oracle themselves.

Come to think of it, of those of you using Oracle, how many work on the core at all? Yes, many of you did in the past, but now? How many?

(AFAIK the question to all of the above is "zero")

No one is saying y'all are "bad people", we're just saying y'all need to step up to the plate, get involved, and help support the platform.

The expectation by some seems to be that no one in the Oracle community need be involved in development, maintenance and testing of the platform.

That's wrong.