On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 9:32 PM, David Richards <david_at_wandisco.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 12:25 PM, David Weintraub <qazwart_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Pablo Beltran <pablo_at_svnflash.com> wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I have no doubt about those all features will be good for the future of
>> > Subversion, from a technical point of view.
>> >
>> > On the other hand, the underlaying message scares me. The message is
>> > clear:
>> > Apache can't drive the development process by itself and only Wandisco
>> > can
>> > do it in the right way and in timing.
>> >
>> > And I think that this exceeds Subversion project and undermines Apache's
>> > authority.
>> >
>> > Today is Wandisco and Subversion. Tomorrow could be Oracle or Microsoft
>> > doing the same with other project. I would not like see Apache become in
>> > a
>> > silly Software Factory.
>> >
>> > But of course, I have not enough knowledge about how Apache internally
>> > works
>> > and perhaps I'm saying a very great stupidness. So, my apologizes for
>> > that
>> > if that is the case.
>> >
>>
>> I am going to look at this a bit differently: Has IBM taken over
>> Linux? A majority of the changes in Linux are done by IBM paid
>> employees. IBM has its own goals and its own ideas about what they
>> want to do with Linux.
>>
>> However, I believe most people feel that Linux isn't an IBM project
>> despite the massive amount of work done by a single company.
>> Basically, IBM benefits from Linux, so they do a lot of code work,
>> sometimes working on areas that have been previously neglected. The
>> better Linux is, the more IBM can sell Linux solutions.
>>
>> Subversion has had a lot of problems since version 1.5 has come out.
>> Basically, the merge/branch tracking isn't that great. In fact, many
>> people prefer the 1.4 version which doesn't make any pretensions about
>> tracking branching and merging.
>>
>> Meanwhile, many people feel Subversion is past its prime. Many open
>> source projects are moving from Subversion to Git. Actually, this
>> makes sense for open source projects, but it is beginning to affect
>> commercial applications. People are starting to push Git as a
>> commercial SCM package.
>>
>> I recently pointed out on another list that I might recommend a piece
>> of software I don't think is as good as another piece of software
>> simply because the "inferior" product plays better with the other
>> software the company uses and because users are more familiar with it.
>>
>> I might not like Git as a commercial version control system, but if
>> most developers are more familiar with Git than Subversion, and 3rd
>> party products start integrating with Git in better ways than they
>> integrate with Subversion, guess what I'm going to start to recommend.
>>
>> So far, Subversion isn't being forked, and a fork would not be good
>> for WANdisco. They are heavily dependent upon people selecting
>> Subverson as a version control system. What they want to do is fix
>> some of the underlying issues Subversion has had for the last three
>> years and get the Subversion project to accept them. I can't see any
>> reason why the Subversion project would reject them. After all,
>> Subversion was once run by CollabNet which had commercial interests in
>> Subversion. Yet, no one complained about CollabNet "dominating" the
>> project.
>>
>> I hope that WANdisco is able to fix many of the issues that have been
>> plaguing Subversion for years. I don't believe that those who are
>> leading Subversion have "failed", but that a private company
>> committing resources to an open source project can be a good thing.
>>
>> --
>> David Weintraub
>> qazwart_at_gmail.com
>
>
> David,
> Absolutely correct!
> Your analysis / explanation is much better than my own. Thank you.
> - David
>
I like the "call for action", and the intention to invest more in the
development of Subversion. However, I do not like the blog entry. I
may be overly sensitive to this kind of thing, but I'm rather
antagonized by the paragraph "Hang on a Minute! Didn’t the Community
Just Announce A Road Map?".
I can feel the frustration with the lack of progress (or translated
frustration of Wandisco's big customers). I understand this
frustration (I feel it too sometimes), and the desire to do something
about it (that's why I got involved myself). However, this paragraph
has an undertone of blaming it on lack of involvement/dedication by
the community and developers, and bad behavior by some developers.
This is not a good way to motivate the community positively to work
with you, it's a negative message. At least that's how it sounds to me
(admittedly, I may not have the full picture of all that's going on,
but so do probably most readers of the blog).
I'm specifically talking about the following sentences:
- In answer to the question "Didn't the community just announce a road
map?": "Yes they did, but that’s pretty much all that happened (and
that really pisses us off.) "
What? I'm subscribed to the dev-list and the commits-list for that
last year and a half, and I've seen a *ton* of work being done. Yes,
it can always be more/better/faster or more predictable, but it's not
that nothing has been done. And I always thought it was kind of
obvious that work on new stuff from the roadmap would have to wait for
1.7 to be finished. Ok, 1.7 is slipping, but it seems it was harder
than anticipated. Regardless, I see a lot of people working hard. So
I'd just say: thanks to all the people who keep up the good work.
- "The commit logs (code committed by developers to the project) tell
the real story. We are not happy with the volume, speed or
participation on the project right now. "
I know (hope) you're probably not criticizing all those volunteers
spending their free time on Subversion, but it can be read that way.
As a participant in the user community, and beginning contributor
dev-wise, I feel kind of personally attacked by your unhappiness with
my lack of participation.
- "Blogging, or answering questions on user lists are important, but
so is writing source code."
Ok, the software needs to work, and features need to be developed. But
I do hope you're not down-playing answering questions on the user
list. I can't stress enough how important this list is to a lot of
users (and how many people put in countless hours to help out others).
Also, I think it's great that there are some developers who follow the
users list closely, answering some difficult user questions with
detailed explanations, backed by knowledge of svn internals. Ok,
that's time they aren't spending on coding, but IMHO it's time very
well spent.
- "We also believe it’s unhelpful when certain unscrupulous committers
decide to commit trivial changes in large files to simply get their
stats up. That behavior has no place in any open source project; it’s
a bad form and wastes everyone’s valuable time."
What? What are you talking about? I have seen nothing of the sort. Ok,
as I said, I only see part of the picture, so I might have missed
something. But even if it's true to some extent, I don't think it's a
good idea to make some vague accusations about it in this way. It puts
all committers in a bad light. Besides, even if this were the case, is
it really that big of a deal?
Cheers,
--
Johan
Received on 2010-12-22 00:54:45 CET