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An open letter to TheMadGreek

An open letter to TheMadGreek

Postby IAHM-COL » Sun May 10, 2015 7:48 am

I am a bit surprised that you had not decided to join the organization.
(i did sent you a github invitation that you had not accepted)

But in spite of, you had been recently so vocallly critical of what I do or dont do with FGMEMBERs. Basically questioning every step I take.

I can't understand what is that coming from. Since as an outsider, you still don't understand the "mechanics" of how we operate, and thus it seem awkard that you are posting "how you think we should do"

In the case of the reversal of the commit of the liveries.
I am ok with making a branch for you to take a plane with no liveries, phil. But keep in mind I am not an employee of yours.
I can do that for you as a favor, but nothing prevents you from forking an aircraft, revert the commit, and take the zip from your own fork. And at least the basic ethics and respect should prevent you to command me to do the job for you.

I am ok with showing you a solution to your problem with the liveries. And also ok with creating a branch for you in FGMEMBERS. But I would appreciate much more if instead of volunteer with venomous critiques, if you join the "organization" and provide some aircraft maintenance, and make branches you require too. Specially since you are a knowledgeful git user --which I am not

In the case of forcing pull requests instead of allowing writting access to FGMEMBERS. Non-sense. It would defeat the whole purpose of FGMEMBERS. That being, foster cooperative development. If everyone can write to the repo (the FGMEMBERS one) that puts us all in the same level of creative minds, with equal capabilities. Forking is allowed, and encouraged, for other technical reasons. But on my watch, there will not be limitations upon when/where/what to write by any FGMEMBER.
If you want limitations, luckily, the alternative exists. And it is call FGADdon.

When an user forks any repo in github. The resulting fork is "owned" by who forks. And such, he/she decides his own limited collaborators, and decides the commits and pull requests he wants there. In that case, it exits my domain. FGMEMBER is the community domain. And I strongly oppose anyone taking "ownership" over a given branch.

If you want a protected castle. Fork and send pull requests.
If you are a gregarious monster, choose yourself. Fork or write directly (onto the master branch)
A few topic branchs may be reserved to follow other people's forks.

Most importantly, FGMEMBERs is not what you think it is. Not it will be. FGMEMBERs is not a collection for others to pull, and a few to keep their personal "maintained" aircraft.
FGMEMBERS are repositories with aircrafts where the complete community can write into, pull to and pull from, at wish.
Whomever wants to take planes for us, it is free to do it. Whomever does not want, it is free to do it as well.

And that is the case of the liveries.
I decided I wanted to transfer them. Why do you intend to stop me, or create an argument about it, about gatekeepers? No-one can gate keep me from introducing them. Nor I will gate keep anyone from the same.
Inclussion. Not exclussion. That's the moto.

If I were to prevent making changes because it does not suit you, or suit other, or because someone like Helijah or HerbyW cryes amok, then FGMEMBERS need not to exist. It exist, because there, ANYONE can cooperate, and send the commit that person agrees important. If you have a different perspective of a plane, feel free to make it, and allow us to copy that as well.
==as you can see, so far you have no idea what FGMEMBERs is about==

And it will not change because you don't get it, either.

About HerbyW.
Yes. I did pull a request over his zone in github.
I did not "COPY or PUSH directly" as you venomously indicated. I send pull requests!
See
https://github.com/HerbyW/Antonov-An-12 ... 0c6a380f35
https://github.com/HerbyW/Antonov-An-22 ... be3e4d8518
https://github.com/HerbyW/AN-225/commit ... 2336e02a65
https://github.com/HerbyW/shuttle/commi ... a121557af8

They are ALL pull requests to his forks.
The point is I merged them myself! Why? because HerbyW had me added as a collaborator to his fork.
He may had done that unintendenly, but having me as a collaborator implied to me he was OK with me doing so.

He send me an email saying he is not ok. I send him an email saying how he can remove me from the collaborator's list. I apologize, too, because I misinterpreted the signal of me being a collaborator on his repo. And I offered my help to revert the merge if he wants me to.

So KL666 and your point that I had made such a super abuse of super-writting powers is a pile of (sorry to say), s a pile of shit. All it happend was a misunderstanding, very small and correctible between Herbert and I, and we can correct it as gentlemen, if you and others don't make a storm of a glass of water.

I hope you understand,
Best,
Israel
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Re: An open letter to TheMadGreek

Postby durk » Sun May 10, 2015 11:27 am

IAHM-COL wrote in Sun May 10, 2015 7:48 am:I can't understand what is that coming from. Since as an outsider, you still don't understand the "mechanics" of how we operate, and thus it seem awkard that you are posting "how you think we should do"


Oh, the irony...
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Re: An open letter to TheMadGreek

Postby IAHM-COL » Sun May 10, 2015 3:54 pm

@durk
I did not want to be an outsider. I joined the devel list and told them who am I and that I wanted to cooperate.
They closed the doors to me.

What I tell Phil is JOIN and help. It is the perfectly opposing meaning.

IAHM-COL wrote in Sun May 10, 2015 7:48 am:I am a bit surprised that you had not decided to join the organization.
(i did sent you a github invitation that you had not accepted)

**

if instead of volunteer with venomous critiques, if you join the "organization" and provide some aircraft maintenance, and make branches you require too. Specially since you are a knowledgeful git user --which I am not

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Re: An open letter to TheMadGreek

Postby themadgreek » Mon May 11, 2015 6:00 am

Dear IAHM-COL,

Thank you for open letter. It is suspiciously similar (identical) to the PM from you that I chose to ignore.

There is also a reason I decided not to reply to the other thread: I refuse to be pulled into a flame war with you. I am simply not interested in a discussion with someone who persistently refuses to be open minded to ideas other than his own, and takes everything personally. It just leads to nothing positive for you, me, or the simulator.

I also refuse to stoop to your level and use phrases such as " s a pile of shit.”, as it is neither a professional nor an appropriate way of describing someone’s opinion.

Therefore, this will be my last post regarding this issue, and FGMembers. Although I’m sure I will be tempted to reply to your response(s), I will not. I actually wasn’t going to reply in the first place, but I feel somewhat “accused" of undermining your efforts with FGMembers and this is simply not true.

You see, you mistake my constructive criticism and suggestions as attacks... attacks on FGMembers, and personal attacks against you. There is a difference between saying “FGMembers is a bad idea. What are you guys doing, you shouldn’t do that!!!” and saying “Hey, I really like the concept of FGMembers, but this is my problem with it, and here is my suggestion to fix it”. One is criticism that is unproductive and can be mostly ignored. The other, is what we call constructive criticism. Keyword: constructive (adjective: having or intended to have a useful or beneficial purpose, Oxford Dictionary). Constructive criticism is generally positive and can be used to improve your product or service, when handled appropriately.

I well and truly was a vocal supporter of FGMembers from day 1. I was pointing people from left, right and center (mostly mumble) to the FGMembers directory, helping several people learn how to download aircraft and how to get to different branches/versions. I even helped some of the developers with git regarding FGMembers. I called FGMembers a genius solution.

You know, If I were so against FGMembers as you allege, I wouldn’t say anything. I would not spend time evangelising it, making suggestions and I would NOT spend the hours I did trying to convince you of something to make FGMembers better if I didn’t believe in it. It would simply, on a practical level, be a waste of my time.

And so, while I supported FGMembers, as things progressed I started noticing “features” that I thought weren’t in the interest of the project’s goals. We (the 5 or 6 FGMembers contributors and myself) in the several hour long mumble discussion we had today, clearly outlined this to you several times over and over again.

Primarily, we do not like the fact that ANYONE who is a part of FGMembers (and your idea is that anyone can join) can PUSH code to any repository, and any branch they like, regardless of who maintains, WITHOUT asking the maintainer, or even letting them know.

Our humorous examples today included the fact that I could accept your FGMembers invitation and make all of the liveries in all repositories pink, without even once being asked “hey, you sure you want to do that mate?”.

But it wasn’t just “theory” or “opinion", we demonstrated today that we could mess up someone's repository without asking or letting him know. And there is nothing he could do to stop us (note to people who weren’t there: he was present and consenting of our trial).

You yourself have demonstrated this by adding tons of liveries (without checking them all to see if they work) and changing tons of sound files (without asking the developers if they need them for other purposes, i.e. the incident you describe) in a lot of repositories. It kind of seems like FGMembers is your personal collection of plane repos. This time the consequence was fairly harmless: You had one very angry developer, but you resolved the issue with him, although it took a good half an hour to help him revert your changes. The next time, it could break a lot of planes, and FGMembers would be a repository full of sad planes that can’t fly.

So what’s the problem with this “everyone can edit everything” philosophy?… for one, there is a lack of respect for the developer. It is disrespectful to tinker with someone else's version of a plane, possibly breaking it, without so much as letting them know. From the time that you break the plane, to the time that they realise the mistake (imagine they're on a two week vacation, for example), everyone who clones or downloads that plane will be getting your broken edits, and get a plane that don’t fly. But it won’t be you who people on the multiplayer pester about a broken download… it will be the maintainer.

People are more than happy to make different branches or forks of our versions, but they shouldn’t have the write to mess with ours without so much as even letting us now.

My suggestion was nothing big. I did not “demand” or even suggest structural changes to the FGMembers setup. I merely suggested that it becomes a convention that one does not push code to a branch that someone else maintains, without asking or even telling them. Instead, one makes a pull request, and the maintainer can review the code, can make sure it doesn’t break the plane, and if it doesn’t he can merge the pull request, adding your code. You now have productive collaboration, without the chance of it being destructive in the first place. If the pull request is rejected, the person is more than welcome to create a new branch which is then their version of the plane, where they have control over the content.


You keep reiterating that they still have their own fork in their own accounts which no one else can edit. You have suggested that people can just following the (mostly nonexistent) links to the original developer’s repositories. This is true, but they do not know this, and so they end up downloading whatever broken version sits on FGMembers, because that’s the download button that is right in front of them.

As I said, I thought these “features" weren’t in the interest of the project… Turns out, however, that I (and the other developers present today) misunderstood the whole fundamental goals of the project, which became very apparent today.

Your goal is to have a massive development playground with no rules or regulations. You want everyone to be able to edit everyone’s planes. This is what you state, almost word for word.

But unfortunately, we (all of the 6 or 7 developers present today) don’t want a system like that. It is probable that other developers feel the same way. We want to maintain our version of the plane, and make it available to our users without having to worry about someone pushing code that may brake your plane.

The main criticism you make of FGAddon is that there are “gatekeepers”, people who basically control what is on there, leaving the developer with little effective control over the content (of his plane / branch of a plane). With FGMembers, however, you have given EVERYONE control.

This, ironically, still leaves the developer with very little control over his content.

Finally, FGMembers is not what you advertised. You advertised it as a central directory of repositories so that users can get the latest versions of the planes they love, while simultaneously being a development environment where developers can collaborate. This is why people joined. This is what we wanted and needed.

When we realized this isn’t what you want FGMembers to be, well, we offered our opinions and suggestions to improve it, since you specifically set this up FOR the developers (or so you claim). Well, this is where we end up… We don’t want a playground with playground politics to match. If that’s the way you intend to keep it, and you continue to attack any suggestions instead of respectfully dealing with them, do not be surprised if people stop pushing their code to FGMembers.

In conclusion, you obviously do not appreciate my suggestions for FGMembers, so I will respect that and stop posting suggestions.

Please do respect the fact that my invitation to FGMembers will remain unopened (if nothing changes), as I do not want to be part of an open source effort where opinions are seen as attacks (or alternatively described using vulgar terms), and suggestions are seen as efforts to undermine the whole project.

I am curious to see the results of your (self-proclaimed) anarchical social experiment. I do not want to be a part of it in it's current state. My prediction: most of the planes will be broken in a couple of years time (or earlier). I sincerely hope you prove me wrong, it would probably be positive for the simulator. In the mean time, I will be putting my efforts into the project that had unanimous support from the developers present today in mumble (hint: it wasn’t FGMembers).

See you at the next USA Tour,
Phil

Over and out (of this thread).
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Re: An open letter to TheMadGreek

Postby Thorsten » Mon May 11, 2015 6:28 am

The main criticism you make of FGAddon is that there are “gatekeepers”, people who basically control what is on there, leaving the developer with little effective control over the content (of his plane / branch of a plane).


As a side note, that's another fictional criticism. The old setup on fgdata has never worked the way that a developer could not access his own contribution - to my knowledge if people felt comfortable with the repository management structure they have been given access and otherwise their patches have been merged, I'm not aware of an instance where a developer asked to make a change to his own work and was denied that can not be traced back to technical issues (i.e. patches with weren't rebased, contained temporary files,...)

The idea of FGAddon is, regardless of what Israel claims, to continue as fgdata + airplanes has operated before, i.e. let developers work on their planes, give commit rights to the people who have mastered the technicalities and to continue to policy of trying to contact maintainers before making changes.
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Re: An open letter to TheMadGreek

Postby japreja » Fri May 22, 2015 9:39 pm

@IAHM-COL

I feel for you in a way but your pushing your idea too hard, I have had several Ideas that I thought were great at the time ( I will list them in a moment ). I did alot of work to setup websites, get somewhat working code and trying to promote the idea in much the same way you are. I created sf.net projects and I've paid hundreds of dollars for domain names and webspace outside of sf.net. Not one of them were successful for long.

Don't get frustrated over this as I am sure you are, I was too and it took me a while to let it sink in.

Here is my list of my failed projects on SF.net the others are not linkable and gone from the web.

Parallax Utilities (dead for 5 years now)
Moe Keno (dead for 7 years but still averaging 1 download a day, lol, only runs on XP and lower)
Blender Hardware Project (lack of community support)

then there is my "Hulu Video Gadget" I no longer maintain it as the Windows 7 sidebar is a security risk and should be disabled. Hulu.com (now owned by microsoft) tried to steel this one on me and only had it on their site for a few weeks/months. This was the only gadget that could play video inside it at the time.

There were more that were older but I decided to request their deletion so they would not take up so much space on SF.net and they agreed.

You can keep trying if you want, but if someone does not want to participate don't take it too personaly. Focus on something more productive that can get you better results. Forcing participents to be involved never works well...
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Re: An open letter to TheMadGreek

Postby IAHM-COL » Fri May 22, 2015 11:07 pm

Dear Japreja

I am missing the scope of what you are trying to say

FGMEMBERs counts with several developers. All of which are engaged on aircraft development for FG.
It also fetches automatically the development of FG aircraft in several other network-scattered repositories and from the FGAddon.

It currently is the most complete and up to date collection of aircrafts for FG, where you, or anyone else can look for these aircraft. And it is an amazing tool for aircraft development.

We also use FGDATA next with submodules and we will be creating a XML catalog that easies end-user obtainng of the aircraft development hosted by FGMEMBERs via the new Qt5 Launcher. It has also become a de-facto aircraft development and distribution center for FG.

Its doors are open to those wanting to develop with us. For those that decide developing somewhere else ( a non-FGMEMBERs repo, FGADdon, or other place), we obtain their development sitting the repository downstream and that's it. I myself, beyond extending an invitation, do not try hard to "force" anyone. That will be inappropriate.

But as a tool, and a FG aircraft collection, it works great for me, and for numerous others.

I certainly have no reason to be frustrated about FGMEMBERS == and thus, definitely, I am not ;)

Best,
IH-COL
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Re: An open letter to TheMadGreek

Postby clrCoda » Sat May 23, 2015 3:03 am

themadgreek wrote:Primarily, we do not like the fact that ANYONE who is a part of FGMembers (and your idea is that anyone can join) can PUSH code to any repository, and any branch they like, regardless of who maintains, WITHOUT asking the maintainer, or even letting them know.


I for one have not been given this kind of access, tho I've seen it written about the repository that anyone can have access and that the reason for the repo to begin with is that FGaddon had "gate guards". Instead I have been told ( paraphrase ) "...until you are more comfortable with git someone will install your patches for you."

How is this different from FGaddon in practice? I, for one, can not see a difference. In that case I tend to agree with Phil (themadgreek) that this is a private playground and not the freedom repository that we were told it would be.

--confuzuled
Ray
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Re: An open letter to TheMadGreek

Postby IAHM-COL » Sat May 23, 2015 3:06 am

Ray
You will have the access easily

You just let me know you feel yourself ready to go, and you are in

I had seen your progress with git already (with the B-52F), as you were able to make commits, and I will be there, as well as others to keep guidng you too.

We have a huge collection of aircraft, so well-intended volunteers are very much needed and encouraged ;)

:mrgreen:

I ve sent you the official invitation to join
It should arrive the email you have account with github

After accepting, it will be your "playground" --if you want to call it that way
But keep in mind is a serious construction zone --hard-hat rules apply :)
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Re: An open letter to TheMadGreek

Postby IAHM-COL » Sat May 23, 2015 3:10 am

@Ray

What does it mean to be an FGMEMBER?

It basically means you are a volunteer to develop FG aircraft with us.
You have write access to our repositories. You can push commits directly, as well as revise the pull requests of non-members

As you can see elsewhere, there are many "paper-cut" bugs and cleaning to do everywhere, and make as many aircraft flyable as possible.

We look forward to your progress

Best,
IH-COL
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Re: An open letter to TheMadGreek

Postby clrCoda » Sat May 23, 2015 3:18 am

Thanks, Israel. I'll have my hard hat on :)

Papercut type bugs in planes, and system wide bug identification and workaround in sim has been/is my forte. Just look at the history of my posts and bug reports and see my pride at being able to discover these things, even tho I am a very amateur programmer in every other language other than Forth (especially hardware colorForth).

I only wish I was more sophisticated, enough to look at sim source changes and preemptively discover bugs that would effect the fleet.

If I only had Hooray's discipline of reading forum everyday most every post and connecting problems with solutions...

This 'thing' only gets better if we all participate positively.

--Ray
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Re: An open letter to TheMadGreek

Postby IAHM-COL » Sat May 23, 2015 3:21 am

clrCoda wrote in Sat May 23, 2015 3:18 am:
This 'thing' only gets better if we all participate positively.

--Ray



That should be our motto! :D
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