Firstly,

Three cheers for Bryce, without whom we would have no release at all.

Let me add some thoughts to your postpartum below...

> Overall I think it went quite well.  Switching build systems was a
> big change, and getting two year's worth of feature work stabilized
> is quite an achievement.

Yes, it's quite the achievement. Each release build is a way for us a
programmers to say "Users matter and this is a thing we think users
should have" and it shows the project is not just a collection of self
interested coders, but also selfless volunteers that can get a lot of
these tasks done even if we don't benefit in a direct way.

Releases are perhaps the most primary target for paid work, where the
money comes from users. Especially given it's laborious, managerial
(pointy haired boss eh bryce ;-)) and could do with more attention.

Perhaps we could have a fund raising just for the next release, we'd be
setting ourselves some harder deadlines and if successful, we'd have
the money to pay for say a person or two to work on bugs and management
aspects.

> Based on the feedback I'm seeing, it looks like we made a very good
> choice to retire our OSX packaging.  I admit I was a little worried,
> but suv's judgment was 100% right, and as anticipated our
> deliberately *not* providing it is stimulating others to step in and
> fill the void.  With 0.93 on Gtk3 it sounds like we'll have
> opportunities for even better OSX packages.

We made a good call there. It's hard to say no to an entire platform,
but we really couldn't support it reasonably and people that use MacOSX
have the worst opinion of Inkscape imaginable. Look at some of the
comments about the release.

> Another big part of the delay was blocker bugs.  I found this very
> hard
> to get my hands around; the issues are legitimately troublesome
> problems
> that should be resolved, but finding people able and available to
> work
> on them was tough.  Unfortunately bugs are inevitable, and I worry
> the
> shift to Gtk3, C++11, and so on are destined to give rise to
> more.  Does
> anyone have ideas on how we can handle things better so there are
> fewer
> blockers?  Or ways to get the blockers resolved more quickly?

I see tackling bugs to be a big part of the problem. We may have to
have a talk about what it means to be an "Inkscape Developer" capital
I, capital D. Our requirements right now are two commits to trunk ever
in the past. There's no long term plan for members to retire and no bug
fixing requirement to keep an active Developer status.

We don't even specify in the about screen which members were active in
the last ten years of development. Anyone ever is in that list. Which
is good for voting, things like the board voting should be open to all
alumni. But for the kinds of attribution that is rewarding to see, we
don't really pay much attention and can't offer anything to bug fixers.

> a more timely fashion.  Does anyone have suggestions or observations
> that could help us improve this?

A service that does timed and shared task management might be an
improvement. I noticed there was a lot of manual work with regard to
task management.

> huge positive impact Inkscape has made in people's lives and careers,
> and the 0.92 release you've created is going to enable a lot of
> people to do some really great things.

Inkscape is one of those things in the world that provides millions of
dollars worth of economic and social value but which takes very little
money. Something Open Source projects can always be proud of.

But there's space to think about having our different user groups (cnc,
artists, animators, web designers, tracers etc etc) involved in sorting
out the major issues they have with their respective workflows. I
noticed that while a laser cutter problem is critical to workshops and
school use of inkscape, it was wishlist or low priority for the project
as a whole. That presents us with a problem where Inkscape is great for
90% of the work, but has critical failures for 90% of workflows at the
same time.

I'll keep thinking about this and I'd be happy to talk on IRC at our
next meeting.

Thanks again Bryce!

Best Regards, Martin Owens

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