Hi everyone
It came to me as a big surprise that this thread has evolved overnight.
Specially the directions it has evolved towards. A personal handwrestling.
I ve read somewhere that Torsten and Thorsten had made their last comments on this topic, and apparently not so. That was a surprise.
Not so much of a surprise. That once either decide to make an opinion on the matter, the reasonings and arguments all go around personal battles, or competitions of some sort. If you guys want a "competition", you are invited to the USA Tour events.
When I proposed FGMEMBERs area, both here in the forum and in the devel-list, I did so as an offering of a development system for aircraft that in my opinion is much superior to whatever SVN=git hybrid you guys have going with SVN. Not only in having lost all history of the commit logs, but also because it helps making FGDATA modular, simple to manage, convenient for testing and development. I offered it not as "an alternative" to the official branch. But as a replacement. I never enlisted in a "competition" of two platforms.
The rejection of the core developers was not very well sustained, and in Curtis' own words, it just came as abrupt and dismissive to me. It comes on the form of:
Thorsten wrote in Tue Mar 24, 2015 2:40 pm:No. Why would I? Do you think I rigged the screenshot? Or do you think I need to prove anything to you?
And, yes, I did think so. When it came to the unbending rejection of a well-elaborated offer, and what I saw as a clear step up for a development sandbox for aircraft, it appear to me that the core developers rejection of the gift was expected to be explained in better terms that
* because we already did so.
Fortunately in my favor, when I made the proposal, I did with a finished product. More frequently than not, and idea, (just idea), needs to be given a chance of, and see if it develops. But I did not come with just an idea, but a completed product. When you said you already did so, interestingly I also have done so.
Durk, claimed a very interesting point. That for a proposal being considered seriously, a cost-benefit analysis needed to be run to see not only how it benefits the project (pros and cons), but also, how hard was it to implement.
I couldnt' agree more, but this cost-benefit analysis was never done (openly if so in the devel list), and every word mentioned at this respect was faced with strong opinions on some developers, and blatant unarguable short dismissals, without clear explanations (like "Just. Stop. Plonk. etc")
Who in the core developers that participated in the definite and irrevocable choice of FGADDON know the benefits and cons of the FGMEMBERs area? and who in that group knows what it takes, stepwise, to implement FGMEMBERs as the official alternative? and who in that group know what does fligthgear looses if FGMEMBERs is implemented as the official alternative?
Because I think this is where the "win" is. And you guys take all the win.
Once again.
When I offered FGMEMBERs to the Flightgear core. I did not expected a personal win. But a project win. I would be happy to have given a grain of sand in the Fligthgear development cosmos, by creating 600 individual repos. And rescue all the git-previous history, and provide an excellent platform to open aircraft development, in a way that can be welcoming to both old and new contributors.
But besides, that personal satisfaction of having been of help to a project I love, I did not expect any other gain.
Not even the chocolate boxes that Torsten Jokingly claimed to give repo's commit write access.
[and I also love chocolate]
For now, having diverting aircraft development repos is an alternative solution that provides us means for decentralize aircraft development, and prevent contributors of being isolated or limited. (Yes, we are not talking here about the selected group of 18).
Furthermore, what you still don't seem to understand is the consequences of me automatizing a rebasing of FGADDon to the FGMEMBERs area. Does it look like a competition to you?
When I rebase the FGADDon area, I already have every commit of yours. One by one. So any commit or contribution on FGMEMBERS not transferred to official, means we will have more contributions. Unavoidably. If the balance comes to zero, it would mean that no new commits occur in FGMEMBERS but only those that I automatically rebased from FGADDon. Not a competition there. While I rebase every FGADDon commit. How do you plan, if so, to have "effects" only available to FGAddon? That's quite a big statement. and I want to do every on my hands to prevent such occur.
But every commit that FGMEMBER has that FGAddon does not makes FGMEMBERs more complete. Not only we included at least 60 GPL planes that never gained "official" status but also we have "on-house" modifications of those official. Plus additional versions of aircraft isolated in branches or additional repos.
Basically, because I do not try to alienate any voice, and I just encourage contributors to develop. And I foster shared development.
And for starters, yes, I do believe the Core developers are alienating. For starters, they alienated me.
Yours, Sincerely
IHCOL
If we gave everybody in the World free software today, but we failed to teach them about the four freedoms, five years from now, would they still have it? Probably not, because if they don’t recognise their freedoms, they’ll let their freedoms fall