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FGAddon vs. FGMEMBERS, bus factors etc.

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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby curt » Mon Apr 27, 2015 2:25 pm

sanhozay wrote in Mon Apr 27, 2015 10:44 am:Thorsten,

If IH-COL withdrew his comment about you abusing the GPL by forking the Space Shuttle, would that be your $100 back?


It would be a convenient world if we could say anything we wanted to say, do the damage we wanted to do, and then be able to "take it back" later, or write it off to "passion" or "momentary frustration" or some other excuse.

Apologies are difficult and awkward and anyone who can deliver a very polished apology is also a little suspect. So honestly, it's not so much about the taking it back or apologizing (which is a necessary first step, even if it is done awkwardly on half heartedly.) The real apology is delivered in one's actions going forward.
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby Johan G » Mon Apr 27, 2015 2:31 pm

In addition, one can consider things said, that probably should not have been said, as mistakes to learn from. A similar situation in the future could be responded to in a different way.
Low-level flying — It's all fun and games till someone looses an engine. (Paraphrased from a YouTube video)
Improving the Dassault Mirage F1 (Wiki, Forum, GitLab. Work in slow progress)
Some YouTube videos
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby Hooray » Mon Apr 27, 2015 2:37 pm

sanhozay wrote in Mon Apr 27, 2015 12:21 pm:As far as FGMEMBERs is concerned, the project had parallel infrastructures in the form of hangars long before FGADDON existed: Lake of Constance, Omega, FGUK, PAF, ViveFG, plus various git repositories. In my view, FGADDON is, and should be, the controlled repository where aircraft have high standards of realism. Unfortunately, FGADDON does suffer from quantity over quality.

The existence of hangars suggests that some people want to develop aircraft in a different way, perhaps with less restrictions and a focus on getting something flyable rather than being as realistic as possible. If, after all the strife, FGMEMBERs ends up as a centralized development hangar where (a) pilots can find flyable versions of unmaintained aircraft in one place and (b) aircraft developers can collaborate more freely on projects, that will be a good thing. Especially if it breeds a new generation of aircraft developers that start contributing to FGADDON.


The point never was about "3rd party hangars" - which are explicitly supported/encouraged, and which will have increasing importance in upcoming FlightGear versions, due to the "package manager" and the "Aircraft Center" - so the general idea is indeed to have as many "hangars" as necessary.
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby legoboyvdlp » Mon Apr 27, 2015 4:14 pm

So you accept that FGMembers is an alternative to FGAddon, and you don't mind?
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby curt » Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:10 pm

Israel or anyone else is free to create their own repository and put whatever they want into it (as long as they follow the licensing terms of the material they replicate.)

What saddened me was that he created a crisis over the issue, tried to create sides and then split the community up and pull as many people over to his "side" as he could. FGMembers vs FGAddon is a crisis that Israel intentionally created himself, not the larger FlightGear development community.

I am aware that there was a huge back channel effort to amplify the crisis and win/build/court support that was out of the public view. What's public on the forum is just the tip of the iceberg. Rather than simply create an alternative and make it available, we had the forum decorated with a variety of messages implying negative things about certain developers ... ranging from incompetence to misuse of power to censorship, and this went on for many weeks.

No one has said there is anything wrong with the FGmembers repository ... instead it has been a steady stream of implications from Israel and Jabberwacky about the flightgear development community, the flightgear development culture, specific members of the community, and largely speaking out against the fgaddon repository and leveraging any hook or subject to bring this up and make their point over and over and over again.

So please everyone, find aircraft where you want to find them and fly them and enjoy flightgear. Try not to get sucked into an artificial crisis over a couple minor technical issues created by one or two forum members.
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby Thorsten » Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:24 pm

So you accept that FGMembers is an alternative to FGAddon, and you don't mind?


As I tried to indicate, whether I (or anyone else) minds is not relevant. Creating a fork is permitted under GPL, and publishing under GPL, I am aware that this gives anyone permission to do things I might mind or disapprove of. I publish under GPL anyway since I believe that the advantages in general outweigh the disadvantages.

I don't think the existence of FGMembers has ever been the issue.

The issue is to what extent you can advertize a fork using the FG infrastructure (we seem to be fairly permissive here - for instance FlightSimPro is not allowed to use the forum to advertize, which testifies that FGMembers isn't perceived as such as 'hostile') and in addition to what extent you can bad-mouth the original project and its members using its own infrastructure (this is where the talk of the ban originates from).

In my view, FGADDON is, and should be, the controlled repository where aircraft have high standards of realism. Unfortunately, FGADDON does suffer from quantity over quality.


You find me in agreement on both counts.
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby Hooray » Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:36 pm

legoboyvdlp wrote in Mon Apr 27, 2015 4:14 pm:So you accept that FGMembers is an alternative to FGAddon, and you don't mind?


Unfortunately, you folks don't seem to understand what this is about - a number of core developers have worked together for a number of years to explicitly support this particular use-case of having an arbitrary number of 3rd party hangars - you can see this by looking at the "Aircraft Center", the "Package Manager" (which predates the AC by years), and more recently, even by the way the Qt5-based UI is developed (and apparently even by Phi striving to support certain package manager functionality).

All of these pre-date "fgmembers" by several years :!:

As others have rightly pointed out, other hangars have never stirred any confusion, and are in fact quite popular (think "fguk").

People are hoping to better formalize the concept of "hangars" and make this a first class concept inside FG, so that end-users no longer need to worry where an aircraft comes from, or how it is developed - all of this is well documented, and it's a stated mid-term goal.

A number of long-time contributors have carefully explained where the problem with "fgmembers" started and how it became worse due to certain behavior and misrepresentation of "facts".

Thorsten summed up the main reasons a few postings earlier, others, like Stuart, Torsten and James have provided more in-depth explanations on the devel list (most of which are summed up on the wiki, too).

So you won't find a single long-term contributor opposed to 3rd party hangars - the crucial point here is understanding what a "hangar" is and how it relates to fgdata/fgaddon, and what fgmember ultimately is (as per Thorsten's explanation) above, and how this relates to existing/future team work, especially when it comes to long-term maintenance (think branching, forking) and collaboration among related efforts.

We cannot possibly spoon-feed all this stuff to you every day, so we expect people to actually read what's been previously stated by those actually working towards this, i.e. 3rd party hangar support, directly built into FlightGear - and to understand the difference when it comes to fgmembers.
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby Jabberwocky » Mon Apr 27, 2015 6:55 pm

Well, it wouldn't have been such a fight if you wouldn't have tried to silence everyone not following your "official" opinion by use of ethically doubtful methods.
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby curt » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:02 pm

Jabberwocky wrote in Mon Apr 27, 2015 6:55 pm:Well, it wouldn't have been such a fight if you wouldn't have tried to silence everyone not following your "official" opinion by use of ethically doubtful methods.


<sighs>

The vortex continues to spin in circles. I'm going to try to jump out now.
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby Hooray » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:05 pm

Jabberwocky wrote in Mon Apr 27, 2015 6:55 pm:Well, it wouldn't have been such a fight if you wouldn't have tried to silence everyone not following your "official" opinion by use of ethically doubtful methods.


Like Curt just said, please don't even get me started - you've been proveen wrong by a number of people, even those who stayed out of the corresponding thread - and this has been previously explained to you:
Subject: FGAddon vs. FGMEMBERS, bus factors etc.
durk wrote:Godwin alert: You lost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law


Besides, we're all happy to contribute to your education (first Dunning-Kruger's, now Godwin's law ... )
But don't expect this kind of behavior to be tolerated any longer around here - if moderators won't deal with this, the community of contributors certainly will at some point.
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby IAHM-COL » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:36 pm

Hello everyone.

I am going to give my perspective in some of these topics. But please bare with me, if I go long in words. I preffer argumentative discourse where you propose, and develop an idea. Clarify if necessary.

I think posts like:

viewtopic.php?p=240376#p240376


or "Just stop."
or an image of a dead horse

Really, bring nothing to the conversation. Even if Hooray wants to argue that as the last word.

In addition, saying "End of Story" as a conclusive way of "saying is my way or the highway", doesn't really prove a point beyond doubt.

I have been advised to keep it short for the mental health of the great FG readers.
As an example, after I post a message like this:

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=26043&start=15#p239895
Dear Hooray

I am certain that you still don't understand what all the noise is about.
*** ETC


It does not honor your reading skills that from that post all you get is this

<<GPL was abused by Thorsten!>>
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby IAHM-COL » Mon Apr 27, 2015 7:46 pm

PART A: What FGMEMBERS is and What FGMEMBERs is not!

FGMEMBERs is a collection of repositories for FG aircraft. Rather similar to additional FG hangars. As mentioned above.
There is an essential difference thou: It was devised as a valid replacement for the FGAddon repository, and as such, it really contains all of the FGAddon aircraft. By replacement here, I mean an "official" replacement, but I will speak of this longer later.

It does contain, I say, all FGAddon aircraft and maintains itself up2date by merging the newest advances in FGAddon via git merges.

It also contains a rather larger number of additional aircraft: spread over multiple additional hangars, as well as a few additional FGMEMBERs only aircraft.

It facilitates De-centralized development of the FG aircraft. and Facilitates new and old aircraft development to integrate together, in a community based development. And as such, it does not struggle or prevent peoples proposals. It encourages and fosters aircraft advancement and incorporation of new (and old aircraft authors).

It is inclusive. All an aircraft needs to go in is to be under GPL. As a development structure, no "finished" state is required. No flying status is required.

FGMEMBERs is not a fork of flightgear, or an associated parasitic software development.
All the aircraft hosted there use FG as the "systems engine". And we are not enemies or a parallel development. We are just users of fligthgear and aircraft developers of flightgear, which use and enjoy the system you provided, and use your infrastructure -- wide and long: the core of the simulator, the multiplayer, the forums, the planes. We are part of flightgear, and as such our discussions, and decisions belong to here.

Others had talk about FG spins... mainly in France. I don't have nexus with such proposals or plans. To me FG is the best, and only, opensource Flightsimulator, and its quality is superb. I love it. I use it. I promote it.
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby IAHM-COL » Mon Apr 27, 2015 8:01 pm

PART B: The origin of FGMEMBERS.

It was during a leg of the USA tour, that I was recommending people to install aircrafts for the event, and suggesting either the download aircraft page, or if appropriate for a given user, I recommended the fgdata that was then hosted in gitorious.

PH-ONOX told me that the aircrafts were no longer developed in the git repository but on an isolated spin of the aircrafts in subversion.
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=25247&p=231103#p231106


I laughed. Really.
It just sounded such a unsmart of a solution that I knew the brilliant FG developers would not hit there. Subversion? the system we luckily got away off a few years back? a system with centralized development, where there is only 1 repository and there are two classes of collaborators: those with writting access and those without? I definitely thought then that was a dutch joke. And not the good one. I researched, to found in the disbelief that it was not a dutch joke. But a french one. But more importantly, one that had taken a fast execution, over the span of a few days after years of discussions took place over the best way to slim fgdata of the load of 400+ aircraft.

I asked around:
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=24045

Why subversion?

viewtopic.php?f=28&t=24045#p231179

The most conclusive answers were that the major limitant over git was the size of the repository (FGDATA). so aircraft needed to split away.
Fair enough. very simple obvious point. Then I asked: Had someone consider using submodules in git and keeping aircraft development into a per-aircraft repository instead?
There was no conclussive answer why not submodules.
viewtopic.php?f=28&t=24045&p=231204&hilit=Submodules#p231204

I had the idea in my mind that it should be feasible to establish a purely git system where fgdata existed with its aircraft, but with a different spin on how and where the aircraft were to be developed. As submodules.

I decided to execute the proposal, to and present it as a viable alternative.
viewtopic.php?f=18&t=25314

In my naive mind the response of the people involve would have been
"Oh! sure. How we didn't think of that before"

Anyways, during the years this discussion took place, (and it was documented on the wiki-- for when it works again we can see), someone else DID in fact mentioned the submodules alternative, but the discussion against were two points

1. No-one had figure out how to implement such thing yet
2. There is a limit on how many submodules can have

(The first counter-argument is no-longer applicable. The second argument then was a fallacy, by the way)
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby Hooray » Mon Apr 27, 2015 8:09 pm

thank you for trying to keep it short, but I didn't understand #p240692 - never mind though, I suggest that it really is a good idea to let the issue rest.

Some people around here have meanwhile reached a situation, where even if they were to post a cure to <insert deadly disease/or severe FG performance issue here>, they would not be taken seriously given their unfortunate history of interacting with the community.

I don't think we need to rehash everything here - that said, some folks obviously were not willing/able to follow the line of reasoning on the devel list, as as per Johan_G's recent efforts to summarize everything in the other thread, so it might be a good idea to actually start using the wiki to document "fgmembers" there, as well as to clarify/summarize the standpoint of long-term contributors (as per the statements made by Torsten, Stuart, James, Curt and others) to put this whole discussion to rest.

While the wiki still seems to be offline currently, I suggest that you start preparing such an article for the wiki - I'll do the same to help summarize the standpoint communicated by long-time core developers and other contributors.

In the meantime, you can use a dedicated forum thread to provide an introduction to, and summary about, "fgmembers".

In summary, I don't see any need to rehash things over and over, and I would appreciate if you could find a way not to cause any more havoc - otherwise, we may end up in a situation, where moderators really need to act on behalf of the community - keep in mind that most contributors don't have the time to spend weeks, or even months, debating on various FG related channels to such an extent, and with such verbosity - and that even those trying to follow all discussions, may find this pretty tedious and redundant.

Besides, I really suggest that you carefully look at who your "allies" are here - some people have a tendency, and a long-standing history, to support whoever happens to end up in a fight/disagreement with certain contributors, which kinda is what has been happening to you lately - unfortunately, that isn't helping your case at all, because most of those folks already have a history of doing the project a disservice, so they're are more concerned with scoring "points" to make up for a certain history, than being necessarily interested in your particular effort, let alone motivated to get involved in any active/contributing fashion, beyond just embarking on name-caling and endless tirades on the forum.

As a forum user, I would hope that you can find a way to restrict your fgmembers related postings/updates to a single thready/location only - if in doubt, I am sure that we can set up a dedicated sub-forum, providing that you stop posting elsewhere/everywhere.
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Re: I hate it whem mom and dad fight. A repost from the USA

Postby IAHM-COL » Mon Apr 27, 2015 8:14 pm

FGMEMBERS: Testing a possible alternative

I did create a post in this forum about considering the submodules alternative, and began the early experimentation on how that could work. Again: The idea was 100% to REPLACE the mis-step of FGAddon. But I was not communicating in the devel-list such intention, because I knew nothing of how such thing worked, or even that we had one.
Luckily for me, because now I realized the unwarming welcome I was about to have.

viewtopic.php?f=18&t=25314#p231382

I tested different things, and grew more and more informed that the system was convenient, and easily implemented. That it was not only a feasible alternative for the FG aircraft development, but also, that it was the proper thing to do.
Also, with the help of forum members, I got the skills needed to recover the commit history of each aircraft independently .Which is technically simple in git. At a point, I could not understand why such simple step was not taken by Clement, when it came to establish the subversion, and to realize that such move was not only hasten, but also nontechnically executed.
Not that I concerned then a lot, because I figured I was doing something great for the community, and by restoring the history, I would be thanked.
Also, by leading the path to return to a purely git system, I thought that would be appreciated: More so by hardcore developers working on pure source-code level such as c++subroutines, for which all this babble makes three times the logical sense over aircraft textures.

A few tests by others were 100% positive. The system with submodules worked, as expected (and once again, knee down-hats off to Mr. Linus Torvalds for his genius)
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