On Fri, Oct 14, 2005 at 12:02:09AM -0700, Ted Gould wrote:
On Thu, 2005-10-13 at 13:06 -0700, Bryce Harrington wrote:
This seems very simple to us, but I've had first hand experience at OSDL with the myriad of ways that companies run into trouble figuring out how to deal with the community.
Well, after reading the e-mail you've forwarded, I'm not optimistic. The reason being that they still seem focused on being in control. Now I don't think they should release a totally random project, but if they are going to never give an outside developer access to their version control, the barrier for contribution is too high. I think we've got roots in a project where one entity controlled the repository and rewrote all the patches ;)
Come now, we've not even seen the source code yet, I don't think we can make conclusions quite yet. Let's hold our judgements *at least* until we can see the code.
I do have to say I've been discouraged myself at the limited communication. So far I have *only* talked with the CEO. No offense to Charles but personally I prefer talking with the engineers themselves; they're the ones really doing the work, and whose feelings count the most.
Also, I'd been hammering on them to allow us to see the source code _before_ the announcement, because I was quite concerned that this sort of pessimism and skepticism would result. I really feel that just being able to see the code (even if it doesn't even compile or run on Linux) would satiate a lot of worries. I recommended giving a list of about a dozen Inkscape core developers the chance to look at the code early, so they could have that extra time to digest what all this means, before the public announcement. I myself have been a bit disallusioned that they didn't take this approach, but I have to balance that agains the really cool fact that they *have* committed to going open source.
Anyway, let's give them the benefit of the doubt here. I know we're all used to seeing companies screwing over the open source community, but that's certainly not been the case 100% of the time, so let's give them a chance to prove themselves.
After all, it costs us nothing for us to hear them out; worst case is we just continue on with our prior plans and objectives, but with a competitor that we can steal code from directly. ;-) But the best case is that we can gain a powerful collaborator, that can help *us* be more successful. The cost of being patient for a few weeks is cheap, compared with the longer term benefits.
It's in our best interest to help them start communicating with us (if not on this list, then perhaps on some other forum or technology they're more comfortable with), because once that's established, a lot of our concerns can just be worked out normally.
One thing I found interesting in Linus' "Just for Fun" was when he was talking about Netscape open sourcing Mozilla. He mentioned how they still made decisions in conference rooms, and how that made outside contributions impossible. I don't care if it is on this list, but if they're not willing to make their product decisions transparent -- it is going to be difficult for others to get involved.
Trust me, I am *WELL* aware of this. Unlike Linus, I myself was one of the people from the open source community who jumped into the Mozilla project right from the start and was helping with coding, bug fixing, etc. And I got burned first hand from the conference room phenomenon. I had been working on some ideas I had with generalizing the toolbars into a general purpose syntax that would work across all of the platforms, when one day the Netscape guy I was assisting came back and said they'd had a face to face meeting and had a "really exciting idea" (XUL).
Needless to say, I was extremely disenchanted by the fact that this decision was made that totally invalidated all my own work, yet I'd had absolutely no say in the matter. I thought XUL was an interesting idea, and it was sort of cool that it was inspired in some fashion from what I'd done, but I wasn't included in the discussions that came up with it. This really burnt me out, and I basically gave up on Mozilla after that, and wandered off to better things.
Anyway, trust me, I know *exactly* the pain that can result from these sort of "smokey back room deals".
But consider that having made this mistake, Netscape recognized the fault and CORRECTED. Today, Firefox is one of the shining examples of Open Source, and while I haven't tried to get involved in it, I understand they've learned from their failings and are doing a better job. I often wonder where I'd be today if I had been better able to stomach the frustrations from Netscape's trouble with the open source learning curve, and stuck with them...
Thus, with Xara I feel it is worth our while to be patient and accept that they're going to make some mistakes and possibly even offend or insult us a few times before they catch on. If we rule them out after their first mistake, or if we go in pessimistic before they've even had a chance to make a mistake, I think we may be doing them - and ultimately ourselves - a disservice. I think we should give them the benefit of the doubt, and at least a couple "free passes" to make mistakes, before we write them off.
That is possible; I've invited Charles to encourage one of his engineers, testers, or sysadmins to join the list; if they're on, I hope they'll jump in and say hi.
I hope so too.
I would have to say that I'm not an optimist on this whole thing. I'd love to be proved wrong, but right now, I'm worried about it.
--Ted
Bryce