[os-infrastructure] The infrastructure

[Bodo Bergmann]

Andrew,

you wrote:
"I suppose I was surprised by the negative reaction from some and let
the
frustration show when they dismissed the work done to date."

I don't think that any of the fair comments (or even harsh critisism)
made in this discussion had the objective to disregard your work.
I personally think you are doing a great job in building up a technical
infrastructure.

But there are some points to be questioned, one of them is
"communication".
The world-techinfo list (which includes Engineering, QA, Support, etc.)
is a much better place to announce new mailing lists, etc. than
word-of-mouth advertising
(or c.d.i news). It's ok to do it more "private" if it's just a research
project,
but once you want it to be accepted within the company or even the whole
community,
then it should be communicated accordingly.

Anyway, I think this is not the biggest issue,
I believe that the criticism is more for the general approach taken by
the company
rather than by yourself. And for that matter our senior management is
responsible.

The whole "we have to be Open Source, that's why we have to get out the
tools first"
strategy is the focus of the critic.

It's like a strategy for "The kid has to be mobile" of:
"Ok, give him a new car first - and assign someone to add the nice
features and gadgets,
so the kid can really impress his peers" and "Let's think about driving
lessons later".
This way you create a wonderful car which becomes a dangerous weapon in
the hands of the kid.
So, what's wrong about sending the kid to driving school first?
Once he has finished it he is able to drive a car.
This can be the fully featured new car or, if it isn't available yet or
too expensive,
take a used car - at least he is mobile without putting other people at
risk.

So, Andrew, please continue to build and tune the car (infrastructure) -
let it become the Mercedes under the OpenSource community tools. :)
But I still think that the driving instructions (the "plan", the
codeline(s) model, etc.)
are more important to start with.

Bodo.


-----Original Message-----
From: opensource-infrastructure-bounces at lists.ingres.com
[mailto:opensource-infrastructure-bounces at lists.ingres.com] On Behalf Of
Andrew Ross
Sent: Tuesday, June 10, 2008 2:48 AM
To: Discussions about the infrastructure needed to support a true
opensourcecommunity
Subject: [os-infrastructure] The infrastructure


Hi All,
 
Alex mentioned I had a confrontational tone in some of my emails and I
wanted to explain to perhaps clarify why.
 
A lot of time, effort, and thought went into identifying realistic
things we could accomplish in a reasonable amount of time. This doesn't
mean we don't need to change the culture. This doesn't mean we don't
need new procedures. And it doesn't mean we don't need to examine our
business model against what we plan to do with open source. 

Much of what we've done was badly needed. We've had some very positive
complements from external people saying it's about time and they were
very pleased with how easily they pulled down the code, built it, and
got a DBMS instance running. We've even had a fair number of internal
people saying hallelujah.

I suppose I was surprised by the negative reaction from some and let the
frustration show when they dismissed the work done to date. 

I am hoping that others will seize the opportunity and work to build on
what we've done. The climb towards success in our open source community
is not going to be a revolution over night. It will be an evolution over
time. It will not be accomplished by waiting for senior management to do
all the work but rather endorsed by senior management once we come up
with a recommendation.

Thank you to those that volunteered in private. From my list, the
merging improvements and syncing could use an extra set of hands.

Andrew
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