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FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Lydiot » Tue May 17, 2016 3:49 pm

Hooray wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 2:38 pm:In fact, I'd go as far as saying that Lydiot's observation a few pages earlier was very much spot-on - we do tend to look at people's feedback differently, depending on the track record, and reputation, of the person making critical comments - but I guess that is to be expected in a meritocracy.


And, as I tried to say from the beginning: That meritocracy may have it's merits (zing!), but my objection was initially, and still is, the vilification of those who then choose not to join this collaboration.

If you're group A, and you say that you're open to collaboration on your basic terms, and group B shows up and wants to collaborate, but on slightly different terms, then the problem is that you guys want different things. If B then goes off and does its own thing, can it be blamed any more than you? Critique can flow both ways on the topics of civility and feasability (of procedures etc), but to argue the way its done here is just silly in my opinion. So what if it's a hostile fork (which it isn't)? You engaged in an open project which allows for forks to take place. If you didn't want that then don't engage in such projects. You can't blame others for doing what is their right to do.

- And 'no', as long as FGMembers tries to collaborate and allow for data to flow back to the official FG, as long as they don't pretend that FGMembers is its own version of FG (core application) then it's not really a hostile fork. Because it doesn't work by itself that way, and probably never will. They've (at least Israel) stated several times by now that the goal was to serve developers of scenery, objects, aircrafts etc, not to muck around int the core code. Not really a hostile fork that functions as its own thing. At all. To me at least.

Hooray wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 2:38 pm:Regarding fgmembers in particular, Israel and Jabberwocky have -in their last postings- basically confirmed that all this applies also applies to them, maybe not knowingly - but realistically, there's really isn't much -if anything- that they'd do to escalate things much further, thus, the term "hostile" is definitely appropriate in its most literal meaning.


If they don't escalate, how is it "hostile"? If Israel makes an effort to share data back with official FG, how is that "hostile"?

Just how much reconciliation do you think you can achieve by calling the other side "hostile" repeatedly?

Hooray wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 2:38 pm:I would just advise people to take a look at what they're doing and why someone may be teaming up with them - I mean, we've all had countless debates with other contributors - and looking back at my own debates with people like Bomber or vitos, I was clearly motivated to talk to them because they had so much to offer (e.g. both of them are exceptionally talented aircraft/FDM developers) - i.e. I could see their potential.

But in this case, with fgmembers in particular, all this negativity is unprecedented - and some of the smartest, and most talented folks (contributors), are literally getting dragged into the mud by people who are playing highly manipulative psycho games, and don't even have remotely the kind of stakes, or track records, that others like Bomber or vitos actually have.

Which means that I will probably continue to talk to folks like Bomber or vitos, regardless of the history - but that I also question the motives for some people to even get involved in all this.


Well, I hope the point isn't to ignore good points being made simply because they're made by people that don't have the time or skill to contribute on a level to your liking.
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Lydiot » Tue May 17, 2016 3:51 pm

Thorsten wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 6:00 am:
You can't on the one hand say that that was true, yet that there is no evidence that they couldn't have experienced what I said could be the case.


Trying to get to the bottom of this complicated construction:

Proposition 1: People were upset that their views were not taken into account in a discussion that had been going on for some two years because they were showing up late.

Proposition 2: Contributors widely feel that they have no chance to get commit access to FGAddon.


"widely" is the problem. I didn't say that.
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Bomber » Tue May 17, 2016 3:59 pm

Wouldn't the simply reply to have been "I'll give them the heads up on the mailing the mailing list"

Or even just pass their email address without the mailing list propaganda.

As for the majority of fdm modellers being on the mailing list..... it explains a lot about the quality of fdm's here.
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Bomber » Tue May 17, 2016 4:02 pm

Lydiot wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 3:49 pm:
Hooray wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 2:38 pm:
Which means that I will probably continue to talk to folks like Bomber or vitos, regardless of the history - but that I also question the motives for some people to even get involved in all this.


Well, I hope the point isn't to ignore good points being made simply because they're made by people that don't have the time or skill to contribute on a level to your liking.


Well that's how it's always felt to me.
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Hooray » Tue May 17, 2016 4:08 pm

no the point was to look carefully at who your allies are, and what their motives may be for teaming up with you - I think some really talented contributors and smart people got dragged into this, which is unfortunate - but a few of the folks over there aren't doing much else than trying to escalate things even further - while others, like Bomber, clearly have some stakes involved of their own, which does not apply to some of the folks who are playing highly-manipulative psycho games on others.

To be perfectly honest, I can absolutely understand that IAMH-COL must _have been_ pretty pissed, and you can find some of my own postings on this forum where I was obviously more than just a little pissed, but what unfolded subsequently over there simply didn't make any sense at all.

Realistically, I think we as a project are doing a disservice to our community by incidents through which talented contributors with a remarkable track record (think vitos, Bomber, i4dnf) may end up joining "the other side" (no matter if that means fgmembers or an actual fork) - to some extent, that could be also said about IAHM-COL, because he could have contributed beyond fgmembers/fgaddon - but obviously that point is a little hard to bring across given the history.

However, given the language and tactics involved, there really isn't much else that the fgmembers leadership can actually do escalate things further - in fact, even an actual fork would be more positive than what they're currently doing.

Besides, while I like the row boat analogy that Bomber made, it wasn't meant as a trap - I have previously, long before fgmembers, encouraged people to fork the project if their visions are so/too different from what the FlightGear project feels comfortable doing (as in combat support).

So that was a sincere recommendation, and it speaks volumes about Jabberwocky's own mental state that he interprets everything as some kind of manipulative tactic - but you can refer to the archives, i.e. my posting history, that I have been encouraging people to do their own thing if it's simply too incompatible with the project's current way of conducting business - which, unlike Curt once suggested, is not equivalent with wanting to see a fork, but just means that I realize that at a certain point, it simply makes sense to face the facts.

And like bugman said, there really isn't much of a barrier to entry for people wanting to fork the project and create their own binaries these days, there are plenty of existing patches to be leveraged, and you don't necessarily need to be a C++ expert to apply some of them - it seems that IAHM-COL knows meanwhile enough about using git to apply a few patches.

And instead of forking FlightGear, people interested in online multiplayer could just as well fork fgms or come up with their own MP environment - you don't need community endorsement to do these sorts of things - and in fact, Thorsten has been getting so much backlash because of his decision to use Nasal for implementing "local weather", we simply would not be having an advanced weather system today if he had listened to most core developers back then - most of LW/AW was bootstrapped on the forum back then, with little core developer support at the time - realistically, they only started looking at it, when they appreciated the outcome, but didn't agree with the implementation/performance

So, you really don't need to have community support to do something novel - but you also need to know when to ignore someone and just move on.

In fact, you will find literally dozens of Curt's postings in the archives where he is giving multi-threading speeches, i.e. discouraging threads from being added - but basically what happened while Curt was giving those speeches is that people still added threading code to SimGear/FlightGear, politely keeping quiet on the devel list, while still making the corresponding commits - fast forward 5+ years later, Curt is unfortunately correct, most segfaults are threading related these days, but his postings didn't stop anyone from still adding more threads to FlightGear.
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Thorsten » Tue May 17, 2016 4:24 pm

"widely" is the problem. I didn't say that.


Okay, I take back the 'widely'.

Do you agree with the rest of the post?

If B then goes off and does its own thing, can it be blamed any more than you?


But that isn't done and hasn't been done. It's been stated a couple of times that nobody has any issue with people doing planes in their own way or scenery in their own way or creating a fork and using their own infrastructure.

The problem starts when you use infrastructure paid for by FG (I think Curt specifically) to agitate against the project, vilify developers, try to 'convert' contributors here... The continuous disruptions on the FG infrastructure, not any lack of recognition for the right to fork, caused the bans by the way.

People are not blamed for doing their own thing, they're blamed for disrupting our thing. They're perfectly free to do their own thing on their own infrastructure.

(In fact, it's been pretty quiet over here after FGMembers moved to their own forum till the last round of cross posts appearing).

Oh, and while it's completely okay with me to fork, it's not okay to fork and claim that we would divide the community. :-)
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Hooray » Tue May 17, 2016 4:35 pm

To be honest, if I were to fork some of Bomber's work, I would not expect to be treated too well over at the T4T/JBW places trying to recruit people to help me develop that unsoliticed fork ...
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Bomber » Tue May 17, 2016 4:41 pm

It's not "the other side"... it's just a forum where I might just be able to debate flight modelling without a flame fest occuring...

It's not like the core developers from the mailing list have any respect for the forum or its inhabitants here.
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Hooray » Tue May 17, 2016 4:51 pm

Bomber wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 4:41 pm:It's not like the core developers from the mailing list have any respect for the forum or its inhabitants here.


that's a pretty unlikely assertion actually - given that "the core developers", and Curt in particular, have been running this place for years, and paying for it.
It's just a different mentality - receiving the information rather than having to check for it actively lowers the workload significantly, which is why newsgroups were so successful. And should the forum ever go down, all postings would be lost forever - which does not apply to the mailing list, which is archived in a distributed fashion, and in a publicly accessible fashion.

Thus, should flightgear.org disappear over night, everything would be gone all of a sudden - i.e. the website, the forum and the wiki.
Equally, forum postings can be edited by people if they decide to move on (which happens more often than you may think).
Mailing list postings are preserved indefinitely - thus, using a decentralized system (like a newsgroup or a mailing list) does make sense from a redundancy standpoint

If you feel so strongly about what mailing list users think about forum users, you can get subscribed in a few seconds - I think your friend Paul actually was subscribed to the devel list. Note that I am also not using the devel list myself, so I relate to your way of thinking, but I also understand that a "push" mechanism is much more convenient than a "pull" mechanism.

I am not sure about this, but I remember seeing you posting to the jsbsim list, right ?
If not, I would seriously suggesting doing that - you will get much better targeted FDM information than you can get via the forum or the fg devel list.

It's not that the devel list is such a great place -it just seems to work for many of the most active, and longest-term, developers.
But as you surely remember, Curt tried a few times to establish the forum as an alternative to the devel list - it simply didn't work out too well, so he stopped suggesting it.
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Lydiot » Tue May 17, 2016 5:09 pm

Thorsten wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 4:24 pm:
"widely" is the problem. I didn't say that.


Okay, I take back the 'widely'.

Do you agree with the rest of the post?


Since we're talking about a specific subset of users I don't think it's relevant. My point has only been that it's unfair to lay all blame at their doorstep when the fundamental problem is disagreement. They want you to change things and you don't want to. You don't mind them contributing if they change their ways to conform to yours and they don't want that. It's a disagreement about how to go about things. I see the merit in what you guys are doing, but I don't see the point in vilifying these guys because they chose to go off on their own. There may be other reasons to not like them, such as some members' demeanor, but that's a different issue. That's been my point.

Thorsten wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 4:24 pm:
If B then goes off and does its own thing, can it be blamed any more than you?


But that isn't done and hasn't been done. It's been stated a couple of times that nobody has any issue with people doing planes in their own way or scenery in their own way or creating a fork and using their own infrastructure.

The problem starts when you use infrastructure paid for by FG (I think Curt specifically) to agitate against the project, vilify developers, try to 'convert' contributors here...


- They were banned, so they no longer use this infrastructure, correct? So that's no longer an issue, and when it was an issue it was still not what you first implied.

- Using their own infrastructure with their own fork is exactly what some are complaining about now. Not you I think, but others.

- "agitating against the project" ultimately becomes a somewhat subjective definition. At some point wanting change within an organization can be characterized as such.
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Hooray » Tue May 17, 2016 5:31 pm

Lydiot wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 5:09 pm:At some point wanting change within an organization can be characterized as such.


yeah, but in OSS, if the original organization/project cannot accommodate those changes/users, forking is definitely a much better option than stalking the original project and its remaining share of contributors ;-)

Absent that, if you disagree with the direction the project is headed, another option is obviously moving on: https://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/ma ... /22018960/

Apart from that, I share your general point about "community friction" being caused by people wanting changes that they cannot implement/integrate themselves, or that are rejected by the project.

And I have previously made the rejuvenation point, too - in fact, once you look at the commit logs and the devel list archives, you will find that the majority of long-term developers had their most productive phase when they're in between college and having a familiy of their own, so it is only to be expected that there's a certain generation shift that is long overdue, and that will continue to cause friction and irritation among those long-timers, because newcomers, with plenty of sparetime on their hands, are eager to implement changes that some of the long-term members disagree with.

In a way, the "generation base package" (aircraft/scenery and other middleware developers) is about to take over "core development", certainly in terms of development pace, but they're forgetting that they're standing on the shoulders of giants, which is why some mentoring is definitely a good idea.

And to be fair, many others have previously recognized what is going on, and even Curt himself has acknowledged that the rate of attrition compared to increasing growth (i.e. having a growing community of end-users) is causing interesting challenges.

In a sense, many of DrDavid's original "CKW" points were spot-on, even though a few of the examples were inaccurate/unfortunate - it comes with the history that the most experienced developers will usually have less time than newcomers, and that those will not have sufficient experience and expertise for their visions to align well with the "establishment".

With that in mind, fgmembers is clearly just a symptom of a deeper problem, but its language and tactics are unprecedented still, and unlikely to be used by a hostile fork that actually forks the source code - which is very fortunate, or Curt would have to consider signing up for the witness protection program, at which point Jabberwocky's interest as a writer may increase even more :mrgreen:
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Thorsten » Tue May 17, 2016 5:39 pm

They were banned, so they no longer use this infrastructure, correct?


Incorrect - FGMembers was not banned from the forum, two specific proponents were for particular disruptive behavior. Which still means we get cross-posts (other people just posting on their behalf,...) or recruiting by other members.

Banning any link or mention of FGMembers would be preventing them from using the infrastructure - but this is actually not done.

Using their own infrastructure with their own fork is exactly what some are complaining about now.


I think the specific problem is not doing their own thing on their own infrastructure.

If, say, a modeler here in the FG forum asks where to submit a scenery model and someone points him to the FGMembers submission interface without mentioning the fact that the modeler is being pointed to the fork, I guess that's not exactly doing your thing at your infrastructure.

If, say, someone advertizes at several places 'look at our scenery server, it's so much better than the one of FG, then that's also not doing your own thing at your own infrastructure.

If you edit the FG wiki to advertize your infrastructure, it's also not using your own.

I suspect the majority of complaints by others fall into these categories - though I can't vouch that every does.

"agitating against the project" ultimately becomes a somewhat subjective definition.



If you think comparing FG developers with a collection with Nazi leaders is a 'somewhat subjective definition' of agitating then I would probably agree that in theory there's ethical relativism and that yes, there is no absolute ethical standard of what is okay, but I would also conclude that there's no point in further talking to you since our ethical standards differ so much any further conversation is pointless. Besides - this forum isn't public space - it's privately owned, so you're moderated subject to the subjective ideas of the admin of what's okay and what's not.

If you seriously believe that people should get away with comparing a forum administrator with a Nazi leader without suffering consequences, I guess you'll find out that this is the wrong forum for you - that's not a widely shared opinion.
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Hooray » Tue May 17, 2016 5:44 pm

Thorsten wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 5:39 pm:If you seriously believe that people should get away with comparing a forum administrator with a Nazi leader without suffering consequences, I guess you'll find out that this is the wrong forum for you - that's not a widely shared opinion.


To be absolutely fair, that's primarily Jabberwocky's manipulative campaigning - and even long before fgmembers, he had a long-standing track record of proving Godwin's law over and over again. Which is a little surprising given the recent revelations, i.e. in hindisght, with his background as a writer and his education, we could have expected more thoughtful postings actually.
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Lydiot » Tue May 17, 2016 6:16 pm

Thorsten wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 5:39 pm:Incorrect - FGMembers was not banned from the forum, two specific proponents were for particular disruptive behavior. Which still means we get cross-posts (other people just posting on their behalf,...) or recruiting by other members.


Ok, I see your point, that type of usage I understand is annoying to some, but ultimately it doesn't seem like a big deal to me.
Thorsten wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 5:39 pm:
"agitating against the project" ultimately becomes a somewhat subjective definition.


If you think comparing FG developers with a collection with Nazi leaders is a 'somewhat subjective definition' of agitating then I would probably agree that in theory there's ethical relativism and that yes, there is no absolute ethical standard of what is okay, but I would also conclude that there's no point in further talking to you since our ethical standards differ so much any further conversation is pointless. Besides - this forum isn't public space - it's privately owned, so you're moderated subject to the subjective ideas of the admin of what's okay and what's not.

If you seriously believe that people should get away with comparing a forum administrator with a Nazi leader without suffering consequences, I guess you'll find out that this is the wrong forum for you - that's not a widely shared opinion.


Listen, if you want to actually be honest about that then you can start here, jump to and continue from here, and you'll see that it's mostly one person carrying on that nonsense.

So, as I said earlier, in one sense it's far more rational, accurate and productive to consider hostility to be personal rather than as a function of a project. Not all people over there have the intent you see. Some parsing is necessary, but I often don't see it. Instead I see quotes out of context with poor interpretation which just makes things worse.
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Re: FGMEMBERS infrastructure vs. FlightGear infrastructure.

Postby Lydiot » Tue May 17, 2016 6:19 pm

Hooray wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 5:44 pm:To be absolutely fair, that's primarily Jabberwocky's manipulative campaigning - and even long before fgmembers, he had a long-standing track record of proving Godwin's law over and over again.


Just for the record: "Godwin's law" is just nonsense. It has no inherent meaning of value. People just like to bring that up as if they're making some valid point when in fact 9 times out of 10 they don't.

Hooray wrote in Tue May 17, 2016 5:44 pm:Which is a little surprising given the recent revelations, i.e. in hindisght, with his background as a writer and his education, we could have expected more thoughtful postings actually.


You have far more faith in humanity than I. I'll give you some kudos for that.
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