[Sugar-devel] Private vs Public conversations.

[David Farning]

For phase one this openness in communication, I would like to open the
discussion to strategies for working together. My interest is how to
deal with the notion of overlapping yet non-identical goals.

As a case study, let's look at deployment and developer preferences
for stability and innovation.

The roll out pipeline for a deployment can be long:
1. Core development.
2. Core validation..
3. Activity development.
4. Activity validation.
5. Update documentation.
6. Update training materials.
7. Pilot.
8. Roll-out.

This can take months, even years.

This directly conflicts with the rapid innovation cycle of development
used by effective up streams. Good projects constantly improve and
refine their speed of innovation.

Is is desirable, or even possible, to create a project where these two
overlapping yet non-identical needs can be balanced? As a concrete
example we could look at the pros and cons of a stable long term
support sugar release lead by quick, leading edge releases.

For full disclosure, I tried to start this same conversation several
years ago. I failed:
1. I did not have the credibility to be take seriously.
2. I did not have the political, social, and technical experience to
understand the nuances of engaging with the various parties in the
ecosystem.
3. I did not have the emotional control to assertively advocate ideas
without aggressively advocating opinions.

Has enough changed in the past several years to make it valuable to
revisit this conversation publicly?


On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 12:43 AM, Gonzalo Odiard <gonzalo at laptop.org> wrote:
> David,
> Certainly is good know plans, and started a interesting discussion.
> In eduJam and in Montevideo, I was talking with the new AC hackers,
> and tried to convince them to work on sugar 0.100 instead of sugar 0.98.
> Have a lot of sense try to work in the same code if possible,
> and will be good for your plans of work on web activities.
> May be we can look at the details, but I agree with you, we should try avoid
> fragmentation.
>
> Gonzalo
>
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 17, 2013 at 2:56 PM, David Farning
> <dfarning at activitycentral.com> wrote:
>>
>> Over the past  couple of weeks there has been an interesting thread
>> which started from AC's attempt to clarify our priorities for the next
>> couple of months. One of the most interesting aspects has been the
>> interplay between private/political vs. public/vision discussions.
>>
>> There seem to be several people and organizations with overlapping yet
>> slightly different goals. Is there interest in seeing how these people
>> and organizations can work together towards a common goal? Are we
>> happy with the current degree of fragmentation?
>>
>> I fully admit my role in the current fragmentation. One of the reasons
>> I started AC was KARMA. At the time I was frustrated because I felt
>> that ideas such as karma were being judged on who controlled or
>> received credit for them instead of their value to deployments. We
>> hired several key sugar hackers and forked Sugar to work on the
>> problem.
>>
>> While effective at creating a third voice in the ecosystem, (The
>> association has shifted more effort towards supporting deployments and
>> Sugar Labs via OLPC-AU is up streaming many of our deployment specific
>> patches) my approach was heavy handed and indulgent... and I apologize
>> for that.
>>
>> --
>> David Farning
>> Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com
>> _______________________________________________
>> Sugar-devel mailing list
>> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
>> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
>



-- 
David Farning
Activity Central: http://www.activitycentral.com