[Server-devel] New architect and roadmap - and phone conference

[Bryan Berry]

Very Exciting!

>Today I've been creating a few new pages in the wiki - you'll find
> there is a roadmap that outlines releases, goals, timeframes, etc.

I notice you haven't listed many features


> Are people still interested in a phone conference? If yes, we could do
> it Tuesday 25th 8am US EST

Won't this be quite early for anyone in the Western hemisphere? It would
be great to have someone from the Peru deployment team participate and I
guess they are 3 hours behind EST. 

>Can someone volunteer to take notes
> of the spoken part + keep an IRC log to post both to the wiki
> somewhere?

I can take the notes and log the IRC conversation

Looking forward to it.

Martin if you don't mind, I'll throw up an agenda page on the wiki. More
important than the agenda items will be goals of the meeting. You should
define the goals of the meeting beforehand. They can be redefined as the
meeting goes along but we really need goals to start w/.

Bryan
OLE Nepal
Kathmandu


On Fri, 2008-03-21 at 19:23 -0400, Martin Langhoff wrote:
> Hi all!
> 
> I am slowly taking over the ownership of the software/OS side of the
> XS. Wad - who's done an amazing job with the insane workload he has -
> will continue to shoulder a large part of it, specifically networking
> issues and hardware. And will hopefully lend a hand as I learn my way
> around the existing code and build procedures.
> 
> On Wed, Mar 19, 2008 at 6:24 AM, Martin Langhoff
> <martin.langhoff at gmail.com> wrote:
> >  am planning to do a writeup of the draft roadmap and open it up for
> >  discussion, and a phone conference is a great idea.
> 
> Today I've been creating a few new pages in the wiki - you'll find
> there is a roadmap that outlines releases, goals, timeframes, etc.
> 
>   See the Roadmap section under
>   http://wiki.laptop.org/go/School_server
>   (we'll need to do a cleanup/update of the other pages later)
> 
> Overall, my intention is to take an Ubuntu-like approach of defining
> calendar-based releases each having key goals. If the goal is complex,
> describe it in a "blueprint" wikipage. And break those goals down into
> enhancements/tasks/bugs that are filed in trac.
> 
> A specific goal might slip a release - ouch! - if it is not ready, but
> we will let it slip rather than hold the release. Also, a desired
> feature/goal may turn up earlier if someone gets it done earlier; as
> we pick up pace, I expect this to start happening more.
> 
> In other words, we are going to run a focused-enhancements,
> release-driven operation, quite a bit more conservative than the XO,
> which makes sense because
> 
>  - the XS tasks and software are a lot less bleeding edge by nature
>  - the XS provides infrastructure services - backups, upgrade
> services, WAN access - that the laptops rely on
> 
> As you can see, this is lead developer / release manager talk more
> than "architect" talk. Right now, the architecture that matters is the
> one that will get us to a pragmatic 1.0 (read the roadmap for more
> details ;-) ) without painting us into a corner. As we get more on
> track, there'll be more long term architectural work - and
> documentation of the thinking.
> 
> I also want to describe clearly what code the OLPC-XS team will
> maintain and give people ample freedom to work on other important
> areas that - for any reasons - we are not working on right now. If you
> can coordinate with us to implement things in such a way that we can
> fold it into the mainstream release, fantastic. But bear in mind that
> initially the OLPC-XS team might a bit busy - we can give some general
> direction, and you should be able to work independently.
> 
> Are people still interested in a phone conference? If yes, we could do
> it Tuesday 25th 8am US EST, as per
> http://worldtimeserver.com/meeting-planner-times.aspx?&L0=US-MA&L1=NP&L2=CL&L3=&L4=&Day=25&Mon=3&Y=2008
> 
> I think there's a decent phone conferencing setup here, and we can
> complement it with an IRC channel for meta-discussion, passing URLs,
> asking for a turn to speak, etc. Can someone volunteer to take notes
> of the spoken part + keep an IRC log to post both to the wiki
> somewhere?
> 
> The new wikipages are background reading for the phone meeting - so we
> can all focus on the interesting questions during the call ;-)
> 
> [ Unfortunately, Skype won't work with many participants. As someone
> who normally has to pay outrageous int'l call rates from NZ, I can
> recommend an international calling card instead of paying the telco
> rates. Or Skype itself to place a call to the US. ]
> 
> Overall, I think we are going to get this done one release at a time,
> keeping our eyes firmly on the ball, until we get to 1.0-ness.
> 
>       Who wants to be part of it?  ;-)
> 
> 
> 
> martin