OLPC: Open Organized Transparent

[Michael Stone]

On Wed, Jun 04, 2008 at 02:50:30PM -0400, Garrett Goebel wrote:
> > A related issue is when people loudly insist that "OLPC" solve their
> > personal problem *right now*.  Again, we have tens of thousands of
> > machines in the field now, and thousands more every day.  You
> > personally may care about, say, Java in your browser, but it is not a
> > priority for "OLPC", by which I mean the 3 people I sit next to.
> 
> No, tell me how you really feel... Which is the OLPC you care about?
> You and the 3 people sitting next to you? Or the tens of thousands of
> machines in the field? Where do the children fit in? How about the 8
> XO's I purchased. Do you care about them? Or the children who can't
> use them to run their web-based self-paced mathematics instruction?

Of course he cares; however, as he stated, he has responsibilities that
prohibit him from acting on his desires to the extent that you wish he
could. Consequently, if you want more of his time, then you should do
whatever you can to shield him from tasks that other people could do
instead.

> Don't try to imply that #6454 is a personal problem or that I'm the
> only one out banging my head up against it. I didn't open it, though I
> did report my findings in it. FYI #6454 was opened 4 months ago, last
> updated by me 3 months ago, and never assigned or commented upon by a
> OLPC or 1cc employee. 

If it pleases you, count the number and severity of bugs that have been
untouched for longer than 3 months. Then ask yourself where #6454
compares fits in to the lists of 'can be addressed quickly' and 'needs
to be addressed quickly'.

> Where is your list of priorities?

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Priorities-2008

> How does that map to the list of open Trac tickets?

It doesn't. See 

  http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-May/006006.html
  http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/sugar/2008-May/006007.html

for some commentary.

> Are the milestones dates or features? Will it be the same next week?

Dates, based on

  http://lists.laptop.org/pipermail/devel/2008-April/012318.html

and subsequent discussion. See 

  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Plan_of_Record-2008

for the most recent commentary. (You might also enjoy the previous
drafts of that page.)

Specific dates: June 7 for 8.1.1
 
  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/OLPC_SW-ECO_5

and early August for 8.2. Commentary:

  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Mstone/Commentaries/Releases_1

> Where do you track the severity/impact of a ticket? I.e. scope of who
> is effected

Some people try to indicate this information with the 'priority' field
on the ticket. In practice, I actually try to skim every change to Trac
looking for important issues. Then we discuss them via status summary
emails or meetings, like the one we're going to have in 10 minutes at
2:00 PM EST in #olpc-meeting on irc.freenode.org.

> Where do you track the difficulty? I.e., general estimate of time
> require to address a ticket

We don't track it formally; only via discussion and status updates.

> How to you track defects back to the changes (ticket) which introduced them?

We don't do so systematically.

> How many Full Time Equivalent hours does a given developer represent?

A guesstimate: about 25 hrs/wk of coding and 30 hrs/wk of talking for
social folks, maybe 30 hrs/wk of coding and 10 hrs/wk of talking for
contractors; and 5-8 full days off a month (including weekends).

> What components are the given developers capable of working on?

I don't understand this question. 

> How long does the assigned developer think the specific ticket will
> take to complete? How long did it take?

The limiting factors seem to me to be:

  a) how long is the critical path of changes necessary to close the
     ticket?
  b) how overloaded is the required developers?
  c) how frequently are the required developers task-switching?

Also, you've got to be careful here to specify a ticket workflow. I do
release work at the moment, so I don't consider issues to be "fixed"
until they're fixed _in a released stable build_.

> How long must a ticket sit dormant before it gets bumped and someone
> takes notice?

It's not a matter of taking notice. It's a matter of being reminded at a
time when there's nothing more pressing on the priority queue.

(Most developers seem to have actual work queues which are about 5
tickets long. In practice, their Trac ownership lists are often 30-100
tickets long. Go figure.)

> What is your rate of defects per change? How does that break down by
> severity and difficulty?

Are you measuring by source commits, packages, test builds, candidate
builds, or releases?

> Are tickets tested? Tested by someone other than the implementer?

Sometimes. Also sometimes. 

> Are tickets reviewed before being closed?  By someone other than the
> implementer. Who?

See #7014 for an example of the problem.

> You _talk_ about priorities and wise time management but certainly
> haven't done a good job communicating how you plan to go about doing
> it.

What should he do instead? (Keep in mind that Peru is receiving
something like 40k additional laptops next week that need new software
which Scott is the only person working on full-time. [He's both the
release engineer and he's fixing and testing individual issues as
documented by his recent changes to Trac.])

> Besides, how can you hope to prioritize if you don't enumerate your
> resources, 

  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Available_Labor-2008

Also notice how I'm splitting release prioritization from development
prioritization into separate management problems.

> constraints, and interdependencies? How can you balance
> work queues if you can't quantify them? 

> How can we as outsiders expect our interactions with the OLPC to be
> addressed in a timely manner?

By bartering for the time of the people whose help you need.

> Even if addressed only means being notified that the given issue won't
> be addressed.

Maybe we should put it in big bold letters on the front of Trac, but if
your ticket hasn't been commented on within a week, that means that no
one is currently watching.

> How do I create a report? http://dev.laptop.org/wiki/TracReports tells
> you about reports, but not how to create one...

Sadly, you need to be a Trac admin to create reports. What would work
better would be to work with a local copy of the Trac DB. We could
probably set up a cron job to make one if it would help.

> How do I view the query underlying a report?

Same problem, it seems. If you want to fix it, find a trac developer who
can help you. Or become one yourself. Let me know if you need a place to
host development Trac instances - I've got some Xen space that is
waiting to be used productively.

> How is it that #6454 is assigned, but doesn't show up under the
> owner's active tickets report?

Probably, someone clicked the wrong field.

> Your hardware may be amazing, your software distribution getting
> there, but sorry... your communication and organization skills are
> lacking.

Analyze the scale of the problem.

> You folks are always asking people to open tickets. But how many of
> those tickets result in n-way communication? How many open tickets are
> out there that go unanswered? 610 have "Never Assigned" for their
> Milestone. Does the OLPC have anyone out there tasked to track down
> abandoned tickets? Why should I invest my time?

OLPC has no one tasked to track down abandoned tickets. Who should they
assign?

As for investing your time - you should invest your time because you'll
be contributing productively to a project that desperately needs your
help and which you will benefit from helping. Look at the knowledge,
analytical ability, and time it took you to write this email. It's
clearly within your power to do a great deal of good for hundreds of
thousands of kids all over the world; plus, there's good people, fun
problems, and history waiting to be made. What more do you need?

> You talk about wise time management. The golden rule applies. Don't
> expect outsiders to invest their time if you aren't going to manage it
> effectively.

Fair, but we've also got problems that (it feels like) we can't wait for
someone else to solve. A lot of them. So we're rather torn between
working on those problems directly (under the theory that code talks
louder than words) and trying to help others to address them for us.

> > Opinions don't really matter for much.  There are less
> > than ten full-time OLPC developers, it's not like we're some big
> > company.  We're working flat out to make our Peru and Uruguay
> > deployments work at the moment; we don't really have time to chew the
> > fat.  Your opinions matter much more if they are backed up with
> > working code, or with a community of volunteers to attack some task,
> > or a well-written report.
> 
> You ought to make time. You certainly aren't encouraging me to help
> take the load off your back. Its supposed to be fun, not torturous.

We're trying. :)

> What's the use of writing a report if it gets filed and dropped
> through the cracks? That has been my personal experience.

Your writing is having an impact. Don't worry about that...

> You remind me of many of the working poor... whose stereotypical
> answer to a cash short flow problem is to work more hours, instead of
> making the hours worked more profitable. Here's another opinion for
> you. Your number one long-term priority ought to be developing your
> community. That means being a friendly responsive place where it is
> easy to get involved, doesn't require a huge time investment, and is
> moreover fun. That is the long-term solution. If you survive long
> enough running flat-out on your short term goals to get there. I.e.
> Herding cats and managing volunteers in the end will be more important
> than any individual code jockey.

Amen.

> The put up or shut up "show me the code" attitude works fine for the
> initiated developer sitting in the middle of his web. But it belittles
> the value added by those on the periphery. And it doesn't encourage us
> to delve in deeper.
> 
> I've been putting my toe in the proverbial waters here. Writing wiki
> pages, adding to Trac tickets, trying to solve my problems myself.
> Currently on #6454 I'm blocked at finding the time to setup a XO
> environment with >512MB RAM because IcedTea (the fully open sauce Java
> bootstrap) won't compile with less. As time permits, I'll continue to
> work on it. I'll show you the code, when I've got it.

Why are you trying to compile IcedTea on the XO if it requires 512 MB of
RAM? Do you simply need a compilation environment for IcedTea? If so,
speak up and I'll find one for you; I've got a development box for just
this purpose.

> >  We get a lot of opinions.  Many of them
> > are, frankly, misdirected.   For example:
> >
> >    "I think the OLPC's decision to sell XO's only in large quantities
> > and only top down to educational institutions is wrong."
> >
> > I have zero control over that.  Generally speaking, such discussions
> > are out-of-scope for devel at laptop.org, which is a developer's list,
> > not a business-models-and-strategy list.  You should be making these
> > types of arguments to OLPC's board
> 
> Where exactly is this board at laptop.org mailing list? Oh... that's
> right. There isn't one.

A fascinating "oversight", though not by Scott. 

> > here is a list of development tasks that OLPC doesn't have resources
> > for, but that we'd love help with:
> 
> Sounds like a great start for a new contributors or janitors list. Is
> this referenced on a Wiki page? Do they all have Trac tickets? Is that
> what a Milestone of "Opportunity" is? How do you expect potential new
> contributors to know this or find it?

By asking. We actually are fairly responsive on both email and IRC. We
just haven't figured out how to organize the wiki so that people who
arrive at it figure out how to help us.

> How do you intend to help with them if you don't have resources? Would
> mentoring be on the table? Who would the mentor contacts be for each
> item? The owner of the Trac ticket?

Mentoring is certainly on the table. See 

  http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Internships

There are also programs like Summer of Code, Summer of Content, and job
opportunities listed at 

  http://www.laptop.org/en/jobs.shtml

> > * Java in the browser.  Sure, trac #6465 and similar.  We also have
> > people who would like a more convenient way to install Adobe flash and
> > other plugins.  This can be done by making a slightly modified version
> > of the Browse activity, but no one has done it yet.
> 
> Will anyone volunteer to mentor me (hold my hand) on this? Should I
> contact the ticket's owner directly? How do you figure out the email
> address by owner name?

There are people around who are willing to do so but you have to catch
them when they're free. Don't give up though, you'll find someone
eventually! (Also, better start hanging out on the IRC channels: 

 #olpc-devel on irc.oftc.net, #olpc and #sugar on irc.freenode.org

if you aren't already there!)

Michael