[Server-devel] Interesting opportunity to study upstream - downstream relationship Was: Root fs on XO1

[Daniel Drake]

On Sat, Aug 10, 2013 at 10:29 AM, David Farning
<dfarning at activitycentral.com> wrote:
> The is an example of the opportunities and potential challenges that
> can occur between the community and the Association. This is why I was
> very pleased that the XSCE-XS thread last week shifted to
> clarification.
>
> The motivations and drives behind community volunteer decisions can be
> very different than the motivations and drives behind the decisions of
> an Association employee. As expressed in this thread, when working
> with large and remote deployments, the Association must be very risk
> adverse. Sending a qualified engineer to diagnose and fix a flakey SD
> card can take days... during which time their reputation takes a
> beating. I have some experience wearing those shoes :(

I think you raise a valid question but we could revisit your thought process.

By "Association" I assume you are referring to the OLPC Association.
(actually perhaps it doesn't even matter which association you are
referring to for the purpose of this mail)

The above paragraph suggests to me:
 1. Community projects can be deployed and it doesn't matter if they
do not work properly
 2. Association projects must be stable/reliable so that the
reputation of the company is not damaged

I disagree with both points and would reword them like this:
 1. All projects aimed for deployment (regardless of developer) should
strive for quality - which includes being "risk averse".
 2. The reason for striving for quality is so that the project
actually serves the users, and is stable and reliable. (nothing to do
with reputation of the developer)

Doing a mental search-replace of those points in the rest of your mail
results in something that makes more sense to me, with the key
question of how to ensure stability and quality.

Daniel