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FGAddon vs. FGMEMBERS, bus factors etc.

Questions about the FlightGear organisation, website, wiki etc.

Re: Published recommendations, guidelines and rules

Postby IAHM-COL » Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:28 pm

You ve got a very neat suggestion Jwocky.

But

Just remember FGMEMBERS is neatly linked to FGDATA and can be fetched in almost its entirety to a FG installation (FG 3.4 for stable planes, or FG 3.5 for all development branches)

This to facilitate early testing of aircraft for the community in general, but more specifically by the community that embraces our technically favorable approaches.

FGADDon really has only 1 real use: Create this page:
www.flightgear.org/download/aircraft-v3-4/

The other use (not a real one) is to encapsulate Aircraft authors and separate them in two classes: Those that can't write (And thus can do as they wish uncontrollably --think L. brenta pulling patches over Helijah's K7 aircraft without notifying anyone but himself -- which goes punishable to me If I call that wrong), and those that can't write, and thus, not matter how beautiful their work is, it has a hard time going "official" --which again means going into the page posted above --Think yourself, or HerbyW, for an example.

FGMEMBERS breaks the barrier of who can write where. So it is a problem of more layers than ratings.

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Re: Published recommendations, guidelines and rules

Postby Hooray » Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:42 pm

Personally, I would be very hesitant to even try to establish/formalize interaction/integration with key infrastructure that is not managed by long-term project contributors - I mean, just look at the canvas-hackers team clone on gitorious, to which several long-term members have access, but which is still lacking behind since the migration to SF.net

You also only need to look at all the other FG related forums that once existed and that ended up vanishing at some point, usually losing hundreds -if not thousands- of postings made by dozenzs of FG users.

I have been asked more than once to get involved in other websites, forums, wikis etc - and I still restrict myself mostly to the main -and official- FG channels, despite having been an avid contributor on AVSIM way before the FG wiki/forum showed up.

Anything that is "official" is not necessarily "better" though (just look at the degree of AdSense on the "official" website), but at least there are people behind it that are committed to maintaining such resources - no matter if that's the wiki, the website, the forum, the build server, the scenery/mapserver server or the fgms network: there are people behind these resources who are willing to not just consider this a "hobby", but to actually deal with any issues that may arise (down-time, technical issues, software updates etc).

Equally, there's a thing in open source commonly called the "bus factor" - and the "fgmembers" repository currently has a dangerously low bus/track factor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor

Even the FlightGear project itself could come to a standstill with some key members disappearing, even just temporarily - but the situation is generally much better still.

Overall, I'd suggest to discuss fgmembers elsewhere, or if the goal is to formalize interaction with external infrastructure, ensure that there's no tight coupling at all.

(this is just my 2c, i.e. personal opinion, not speaking in any "authoritative" capacity here at all)
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Re: Published recommendations, guidelines and rules

Postby IAHM-COL » Sat Apr 18, 2015 7:47 pm

I mean Hooray! I am just following your own advise of creating such wiki pages.
I would bring links to your own post for evidences, but I know you are a gentleman, and you know what've you said.

Very sane posture you had by inviting me to do so. I just need to learn wiki creation better.

Also, I had said, 1 time. 2 times, way too many times to exasperate others, that FGMEMBERS alternative is open to anyone willing to join and contribute. But also, to the "managers" of FG to come and join the management team as well. I had even, if I recall correctly, invited you to jump on board of the management team.

There seems to be fear that I am trying to "steal" things for myself. Not quite. When I had offered the infrastructure, it has been a quite frank an honest offer for ALL of us to take possession of it. After all, is our communal property.

So far I am the one doing most of the pull work. But I wont mind others saying. Israel, I am here to help. What is needed?

Best,
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Re: Published recommendations, guidelines and rules

Postby Jabberwocky » Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:14 pm

Hummm, the infamous bus factor ... lets do some math ...

if IAHM-COL would be incapitated, lets say by a sudden stroke after reading posts, I see 17 others in the FG Aircraft Developer's team, I know at least five persons, who could take over, even if it would cause some problems because some would need to read some more git documentation, but well. Aside of that, every developer has full access tot he planes/branches, he brought in, that makes another what 20 persons?
On the other hand, the "official" repository has one or two gatekeepers now? I am not up to date, but there seem not many people around there. It's of course a different situation, if the "official" repo goes over the Jordan because of a low bus factor, we lose about 250 planes and even those not really because they are all in FGMEMBERs, some of them with even never versions. FGMEMBERs on the other hand has an about 7 times higher bus factor and actually needs it, there are more than 600 planes in it, a lot of them not available via the "official" repository.
So, Hooray, if you are worried about the bus factor of FGMEMBERs, the bus factor of FGADDON appears to be only a fraction of it ... so you should be about the same factor more worried about FGADDON. Remember, when Clemente had his little outbreak, he killed single handedly FGCom for some days.
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Re: Published recommendations, guidelines and rules

Postby Hooray » Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:32 pm

I think you are misunderstanding, I am quite aware of what I said, and I stand by my words - however, those were not specific to just "fgmembers", I explicitly suggested to use the wiki to document the git corresponding - without any of that necessarily having to be (just) about fgmembers. Equally, someone as willing as you, to type so much, would be well-adivsed to get involved on the wiki, no matter if that's about fgmember or not.

There's basically no learning curve whatsoever involved when it comes to the wiki - in fact, the forum is more difficult to use.
And don't worry about formatting and proof-reading, we have enough folks who are quite willing to help out with that - I mean, I am basically only using a handful of wiki markup tags so far - and others regularly review/edit my contributions, too.

I just don't believe in this way of using the forum (or even the devel list) with such a degree of verbosity - if there is something you truly care about, the wiki is a much better place to make your case and document the corresponding workflows/processes, as well as spread the word (updates) than the forum.

I don't think anybody around here is concerned about you "stealing" things by cloning/providing a repository - long-term contributors are mainly concerned about the added organization/management and maintenance overhead, as well as this adding to the confusion of newcomers - given that FG already is a complex project/software/community.


And yes, you did in fact ask me if I wanted to get involved, and I stated quite clearly that I am already juggling enough duties/responsibilities and that I couldn't realistically be of any help here - to see for yourself, just look at the canvas-hackers team clone, which I initiated a while ago, and which still hasn't been migrated properly. Then again, I do believe that there are better ways for getting involved and for accomplishing the goal here, and that "fgmembers", as well as your constant promoting of it, is adding to the confusion/irritation of the community as a whole.
I would agree that you weren't beeing treated fairly on the devel list a while ago - but meanwhile, you've said so much that it is hard to make your case without appearing obnoxious - and this particular thread really isn't just about "fgmembers".

I do share your vision, and I also do see quite a few bottlenecks in the "core" project - but the current modus operandi really isn't helping your case, while adding to the confusion in the community

PS: I am not a core developer/committer, and I have no aspirations of becoming one, but I can perfectly relate to long-term members not wanting to add even more community-based options. BTW: I am not responding to JW here, who's got quite a few things wrong, and it would take me too long to set the record straight, and it woud be way offtopic, too :)
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Re: Published recommendations, guidelines and rules

Postby Torsten » Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:53 pm

Jabberwocky wrote in Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:14 pm:On the other hand, the "official" repository has one or two gatekeepers now? I am not up to date, but there seem not many people around there.

You are not only not up to date but way off track.
We have three Admins, twelve Developers with commit rights to "everything flightgear", four FGData commiters with rights for FGData+FGAddon plus twenty FGAddon commiters. Another handful for scenery, openradar, ticket houskeeping etc. That's a bit more than two if I count correctly.

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Re: Published recommendations, guidelines and rules

Postby IAHM-COL » Sat Apr 18, 2015 10:59 pm

So here we go back in circles.


PHEW!... what a community!

I already threw my pray to good that no bus is coming to me anytime soon!

Now to set record straight

1) FGMEMBERs is not a fork of flightgear. it is more like another aircraft repository, that in some way is rather similar to the long-time-accepted additional hangars, that had existed in FG since before I ever joined this community. Yes, accepted, this "hangar" has all of the aircraft also in FGAddon, + a "hell-lot-of" more versions of these, plus basically any other GPL aircraft for FG I know of, regardless of quality, or functional status. We are a development platform after all. Only thing required is interested developers.

2) Therefore, all flightgear plattform with its maintainance groups and whatever people can be bus-struck there, affect FGMEMBERS the same level. If FG collapses, so does FGMEMBERS. We can't have aircrafts without simulator. So, I thank all the core, for their hardwork and cheerleader them to keep doing beautiful stuff, and avoid being hit by buses along the way.

3) FGDATA next with submodules is nothing more that a "branch" of FGDATA next. And we keep updated with every single commit and changes over the development version FGDATA next 3.5;

This implies again, a) that FGDATA next stability and progress is required for FGDATA next with submodules stability and progress. As a matter of fact, I need your stability for my stability. If FGDATA next fails to work, FGDATA next with submodules will follow. Because It is basically the same thing, and the same code. Your bus factor, whatever that is, it is the same as mine. I just merge your commits day after day (well my cronjob does that!)[/b]

but also Much more importantly, FGDATA next with submodules can be very, very easily accepted by the core devs and community and if so, the steps to bring all the aircrafts back to FGDATA next (the upstream) are very simple. Any one knows what a pull request is? As soon as FGDATA with submodules branch were to be merged with the upstream branch, suddenly, all of the community could have this feature.

The blocking attitude of the core community really comes to a shock to me. And, in my opinion it has nothing to do with a "community unanimous decision". Many people threw in the devel list words of support to my proposal. Just the center 3-5 most powerful members of those core said: NO. PERIOD. And spoke of a meritocracy that justified the behavior.

But. Still, the merging of the submodules is technically simple, and technically favorable, and can be done any time, now or in the future. And bring some peace to the community in one stroke.

4) FGAddon has 3 managers, at least publicized: Torsten Dreyer, James Turner, and Curtis Olson. And then I once listed the 18 commiters since inception. And now 1 more: Ed. Avernge. One of these commiters, Helijah, was stripped of its authoring capability, without shame. The developer and maintainer of 268 out of 480 aircraft. And now, he is one of the FGMEMBERS. I can't say he is 100% on board, but he knows of the past that ashamed the FGAddon management, and at least know that thing has not happen on our side.
FGMEMBERS has 1 manager: IH-COL. And he has invited the FGADddon Managers to join the club. Because I am being open about this stuff. It s not about political power or ownership or anything like that. Its about Fostering new and old contributors to share development of the FG aircraft, while making the ride enjoyable, and easy. Facilitate if it may. And make even new developers integration easy, without this meaning a continuous endangering of the infrastructure, and of all the planes!.

Like comparing giving a person the ability to make his own 1 aircraft fork, that he can use, learn, mess, and when all clear, merge to the FGMEMBERs fork, vs, giving that same beginner the ability to write to one subversion repo with all the repositories, and all of the aircrafts simultaneously.

An alternative that not even Clement understood very well, when he spoke to me somewhere about how easy was deleting one aircraft, as oppose to deinitialize a submodule. To which I warn him that if he deleted an aircraft it would be gone for good, to everyone, vs a person deinitializing a submodule does just remove it from their local (in their computer) copy, without affecting no-one-else

5) In this order of ideas, the bus factor of FGMEMBERs is abit worse. I agree. 1 manager. 16 developers. FGAddon is 3 managers, 19 developers. But if we go to the point that FGMEMBERs is a very new solution, idea, proposal and invitation to FG community, I would argue that we have had a very nice accepting, and we kind of match FGaddon numbers, even thou A lot of negative propaganda has been spread over my proposal, even suggesting that discussing it is not of FG community interest and should happen elsewhere. At which, I profoundly disagree. It 's just a FG aircraft collection, after all.

6) The attitude that FGaddon HAS TO BE the accepted solution because a) it already happen, b) it s a "unanimous" community decision that 1 single person opposes to, and wedges differences [FALSE statement by the way], and c) Very importantly It will not be revaluated because very important people backing it up cannot be and are not willing to be wrong this 1 single time, sorry, it does not cut it for me

The additional -previously unmentioned before Thorsten brought it up somewhere in the forum- explanation that the rejection of FGMEMBERS and FGDATA with submodules come because no one in the core circle wanted to trust critical infrastructure to me is also weak. First of all, I offered the infrastructure. and secondly, the same idea can be implemented or even forked if you ever would have wanted to. The most important of all, because in several instances, for a reason really unknown to me, the same cores had stopped my offers of help: Like properly splitting FGDATA to FGDATA next, establishing a submodular approach for aircraft, or even start discussions about how to better manage Scenery distribution, that could be compatible with both terrasync, an url management (restoring the world map) and submodularly downloadable for a complete world obtaining.

This last proposal has also gone in the unheard offers of help by me. Just because ... here I really can't help not having an answer

***

What I really look forward is for a time that we can come down to communicate the option to bend the previous decision of rejecting the FGDATA next with submodules, and implement FGMEMBERS officially. That will be amazing, and so far, the only reasons against really had been the greed of the core developers for "Holding the right answer"

What I am really not looking forward is for being personally targetted. Getting an irreversible ban to the devel list because, really, bottom line, many people was already displaying support for my proposal, and that was growing out of proportion to sell the idea of a "community decision". Being unable to communicate to Curt a petition (official and unofficial) to restore my devel-list status --the same as everyone else, whatever that means.

What I am not really looking forward to is the spread of false propaganda and fears of how FGMEMBERS break the community or affect the project. Because nothing is far from the thruth. All it breaks is the possibility or at least the easiness to outcast people's aircraft developments, being seasoned and long time contributors (like Helijah) or potential new members, some of which have already long demostrated their worth, skill and willingness (like the dash author, Herby W, or JWocky)

I hope that sets you straight,
Best,

IH-COL
Last edited by IAHM-COL on Sun Apr 19, 2015 12:02 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Published recommendations, guidelines and rules

Postby Jabberwocky » Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:07 pm

And how many have actually full access to the SVN repository? Remember, the problem started because Clemente was as the only one who could in the gatekeeper position. So you changed that? Because otherwise, I have to assume, your attempt to count scenery developers and C++ developers and whatnot for the SVN is just one more of your bad math examples ... or is it maybe intentionally?
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Re: FGAddon vs. FGMEMBERS, bus factors etc.

Postby curt » Sun Apr 19, 2015 1:28 am

Clement was never the only one with full access to the SVN repository. It is as Torsten says.
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Re: FGAddon vs. FGMEMBERS, bus factors etc.

Postby Torsten » Sun Apr 19, 2015 9:14 am

Jabberwocky wrote in Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:07 pm:And how many have actually full access to the SVN repository?

Hmm - let's do some math.
Torsten wrote in Sat Apr 18, 2015 9:53 pm:We have three Admins, twelve Developers with commit rights to "everything flightgear", four FGData commiters with rights for FGData+FGAddon plus twenty FGAddon commiters

3 + 12 + 4 + 20 = ?
Jabberwocky wrote in Sat Apr 18, 2015 11:07 pm:So you changed that?

No, Clément never was the only person with rights on FGAddon, so there was nothing I could change.
The numbers above originate from the move from gitorious to sourceforge which added many users to our repositories. They loosly reflect the rights structure we had at our old location.

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Re: FGAddon vs. FGMEMBERS, bus factors etc.

Postby Jabberwocky » Tue Apr 21, 2015 7:48 pm

Then we are again at the question why one person could decide on his own to deny a plane to begin with ... unless of course, all of them look exactly for the decisions of one person in the background. And given your defence of this decision and our earlier for- and backward in which you claimed, it was your decision, that makes you the suspect.
However, I made a suggestion and it appears typically, that there is no response from you about that ...
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Re: FGAddon vs. FGMEMBERS, bus factors etc.

Postby Torsten » Tue Apr 21, 2015 8:10 pm

Ever after reading your post twice, I was unable to find a single statement backed by facts.
Maybe I am too simple minded for that.
I rest my case.

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Re: FGAddon vs. FGMEMBERS, bus factors etc.

Postby Jabberwocky » Tue Apr 21, 2015 8:14 pm

So you "officially" claim, the incident with the Dash never happened, Helijah was never banned from SVN and we all dreamed that only? And probably Michat also dreamed the whole story with the shuttle up and IAHM-COL is still able to send posts to the developer's list? Do you claim, nothing of this ever happened? Be careful, because there are a lot of witnesses on this board.
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Re: FGAddon vs. FGMEMBERS, bus factors etc.

Postby Hooray » Tue Apr 21, 2015 8:36 pm

  • don't mistake getting "banned" with having access revoked due to technical reasons, such as a demonstrated misunderstanding of SCM concepts
  • F-JJTH has made a number of postings and statements that might be considered "bold" by some standards, but you should give him the benefit of the doubt, especially given the obvious fact that English isn't his first language, so some things were maybe not said in a very tactful manner. However, at that time, F-JJTH was largely responsible for handling the migration, so it made sense for him to oversee what was going on.
  • Equally, you should take into account that helijah has a certain standing within the French community (to which F-JJTH undoubtedly belongs), so there's clearly some "history" involved, too.
  • then again, having your driving license taken away from you by a police officer for passing a stop sign isn't "banning" you, but just "punishing" you for not following rules - simple as that.
  • the "shuttle story" is a huge misunderstanding by some folks around here who think that GPL'ed projects are "exclusively owned" by them when created from scratch, without realizing that we're all standing on the shoulders of giants here - and that even the space shuttle in particular had a long history in FG, long before HerbyW, Michat and others showed up here. There's been momentum revolving around space flight in FG for years, backed by efforts like vitos' or Thorsten's - i.e. contributing "building blocks" to make it happen. Just like HerbyW, Michat and Thorsten have now contributed certain parts of this puzzle (reusing Jon's and Gijs' work), 5+ years from now, people may come up with a better implementation - and depending on the degree of involvement of the corresponding contributors, this may even mean that things will be maintained/developed elsewhere, possibly even without Thorsten's involvement at all. This is part of the empowering nature of GPL'ed work: The very instant we contribute it to the project, we may move on to greener pastures, but our work may still be useful to others, without anybody having to consult back with us necessarily.
  • As for IAHM-COL, I think he recently apologized on the forum for some of his behavior, so he seems to be even more aware of his actions than you're - then again, you could say that I can be a huge PITA, but IAHM-COL managed to be even more obnoxious than most forum users around here - on the forum, we wouldn't have tolerated that, on the devel list there are only very limited means to restrict access/postings - Curt actually took the time to explain those steps, and I have no doubts that IAHM-COL will be able to post again at some point.

PS: your "witnesses" would be well-advised to actually read up on how the GPL works, and how the FG project has been working for the last couple of years.
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Re: FGAddon vs. FGMEMBERS, bus factors etc.

Postby Torsten » Tue Apr 21, 2015 9:06 pm

Jabberwocky wrote in Tue Apr 21, 2015 8:14 pm:So you "officially" claim, the incident with the Dash never happened, Helijah was never banned from SVN and we all dreamed that only? And probably Michat also dreamed the whole story with the shuttle up and IAHM-COL is still able to send posts to the developer's list? Do you claim, nothing of this ever happened? Be careful, because there are a lot of witnesses on this board.

Well I claim they did not happen in the way you are telling them.

The dash was rejected in it's presented state due to technical issues (temporary files, undescriptive name and others). Once these issues are solved and somebody volunteers as a maintainer, it is more than welcome to fgaddon.

Helijah was asked to change his commit technique to avoid unneeded commits, refused to do so and was revoked commit access. Following certain standards is part of the game. I was not involved in that, so I can't comment on any details, but I am open to talk to Helijah to solve whatever issues existed and re-add him to the list of commiters.

I am not involved in the story of the shuttle (Remember: Thorsten != Torsten). However, I really like what Thorsten is doing in that area and I hope he keeps it going.

Israel is still able to send to the flightgear-devel list, however he has his "moderation" flag set for good reason. That means every of his posts needs to be confirmed by a moderator.
I am not among that moderators but I strongly support that decision.

That being said, I am convinced that we will never ever agree on any of these points. You may think that I and all the other long-term contributors and people running the project are morons, dictators or whatever. Know what? I can live with that. I had fun with FlightGear long before you showed up and I will have fun with it long after you are gone.

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