Re: [Phpgroupware-developers] Communication ... again (was PHPDoc s for head)

[Brian Johnson]

Question to others reading this (since this fellow won't be):

Why do you suppose a person takes the time to write something like this?

It surely isn't to be constructive

> To scale, each person has to tackle a different issue and integrate his
> solution into the project. That means there's going to have to be some
> delegation of duties and a willingness to give up some control and
> trust others to do what you don't have time to do.

Maybe it's time he followed his own advice


DELETE DELETE DELETE for this diatribe




Alfonso Guerra (address@hidden) wrote:
>
> Greetings,
>
> Foreword: Before anyone replies to me let me tell you in advance I'm
> going to delete your response, so don't even bother. I don't care what
> rationale or excuse you give for your behavior, it isn't justifiable.
> So before you hit that reply button know how I will respond to you:
> Delete. Delete. Delete.
>
> Just a quick introduction before I start throwing my two cents in so
> you can understand where I'm coming from.
>
> Back in December 2004 I reviewed over 14 Open Source CMS packages.
> Based on my needs I selected eGroupWare. At that time I wasn't aware of
> phpGW, but as you'll see later it wouldn't have made a difference. My
> objective was to pick the CMS closest to my needs and then port/develop
> apps to it as needed.
>
> In the course of learning eGW's internals I learned about phpGW, the
> probiz contributed docs, the political squabbles, eGW forking from
> phpGW, etc.
>
> This is the primary reason I hate the Open Source movement: rather than
> being motivated to cooperatively build a community, its proponents are
> seeking to gain control over how others work and the work they produce.
> "I want my source code, and I want your source code and you better give
> it to me or you're evil."
>
> It's all about control. It's all about how you treat others when you
> have that control.
>
> When maddog (John Hall) gave a presention to our local user group last
> year, he said the primary factor behind what he believes to be Open
> Source's inevitable success is the scalability inherent in its
> development. That as a result of having so many developers able to work
> on source code tailored to their own and customers' needs, the Open
> Source movement will overwhelm any proprietary competitor solely on the
> basis of sheer numbers.
>
> It ain't likely, and this whole phpGW/eGW/etc situation is a perfect
> example why. Some guys were unhappy with the way the project was
> progressing so they forked the project and started eGW. I came across
> eGW and, finding its claims the closest to my site objectives, set up
> my site using it. As I began learning its internals and the way it
> worked I discovered phpGW and the whole forking business, and looked
> into using phpGW instead as I dislike political squabbling and the
> pettiness that is forking.
>
> However, whereas the eGW installed and configured easily and looked
> professional, I wasn't even able to get a working phpGW installation
> and what I _did_ get was klunky and sloppy. I thought it might take a
> couple fixes to get the system working, but lowering the error
> reporting level to E_ALL displayed over 1100 notification errors in one
> module alone! That's simply unacceptable as I can't develop the code
> for my site, fix the phpGW code to bring it up to production quality,
> and factor out the eGW differences to send in my patches just to make
> your job easier in picking up my changes. I'm not gonna do it. That
> doesn't _scale_. Not positively, anyhow.
>
> Multiple developers working independently on project changes which are
> not integrated back into a common repository does not scale well. Not
> for system developers. Not for application developers. Not for
> administrators. Not for users. Each fork produces an extra competitor
> and noise in the market and takes time away from the development time
> you have. Each fork reduces the size of the development team and the
> user base making your product less attractive to planners and
> implementers reviewing systems for a new site.
>
> That's why Open Source will never achieve global dominance: frail egos
> and childish posturing to claim The Absolute Truth; hence, the moral
> right to deny any heretics from contaminating your Holy Work. It
> doesn't matter whether the issue is licensing, programming language,
> source code conventions, toolchain or committing changes to a module
> without waiting for someone else's okay. As long as your agenda is
> protecting your dogma, those whose vested interest is profit will
> figure out a way to deal with one another's quirks and produce a
> solution that beats yours and they'll get it done faster.
>
> I reiterate: _Do_ _Not_ _Reply_ _To_ _Me_. I already know what the
> responses are and I will be ignoring and deleting emails without regard
> to content. You think you're justified in insisting things should be
> done your way. (Delete. Delete. Delete.) I don't. You think you deserve
> to be heard. (Delete. Delete. Delete.) I don't. You think once you've
> completed your masterpiece and revealed it to the uneducated masses
> that all will marvel at the majesty and wonder that is you and shower
> you with praise and honor and glory for you to bask in for the rest of
> your life. (Delete. Delete. Delete.) Truth is, hotshot, that the rest
> of us think of you the same way you view the rest of us:  as a pompous
> ass. The only reason I've given any thought to you at all in the past
> was for the _potential_ that you might be able to further _my_ goals,
> NOT (Yes, I used all caps. Deal with it. Delete. Delete. Delete.) to
> get a glimpse of your Enlightenment.
>
> I'm smarter than you are anyway. I'm no longer referring to the
> individual phpGW developer either. I mean all you phpGW developers put
> together. I am smarter, way smarter. I'm even smarter than you and the
> eGW guys and the phpNuke guys and the TWiki guys and the developers of
> every other CMS out there put together. The primary reason is simple:
> you guys are unwilling to work together. I don't slow down my project's
> forward progress. You do. And if your output is inferior to mine, you
> might as well be inferior.
>
> The phpGW is now in its third generation, from you guys to eGW to me.
> Three separate projects. That's three isolated design, documenting,
> coding and testing efforts being undertaken. That's a lot of redundant
> work. Picking up the eGW tarball saved me time to get a site up. But
> it's going to end up taking more time to redo the phpGW core and the
> existing apps to suit my needs than if I coded the whole thing from
> scratch. I'm going to have to delicately make changes in a production
> system just to get it right. That won't bring scalability to my project
> and without a means of pushing the changes back upstream it certainly
> won't bring any to yours.
>
> By the way, I'm not going to release the source as yet another forked
> project on the net. (Delete. Delete. Delete.)
>
> To scale, each person has to tackle a different issue and integrate his
> solution into the project. That means there's going to have to be some
> delegation of duties and a willingness to give up some control and
> trust others to do what you don't have time to do.
>
> Source code should make, at the least, a linear progression to any
> state. The changes from your code to mine to the next site's should be
> moving continually upwards over time as the codebase migrates. Ideally,
> it would progress exponentially as the efforts of several cooperative
> developers are integrated into a single codebase. Unfortunately, the
> typical progress is more akin to that of a drunken sailor as each
> developer focuses solely on his own comfort and not on learning how to
> work with others.
>
> So, keeping that in mind, here's my input on the situation. After
> reading it you can do what I do. Delete. Delete. Delete.
>
> On Apr 20, 2005, at 6:44 AM, Dave Hall wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 2005-04-20 at 11:12 +0200, Mailings - Christian Boettger wrote:
> >>  G'day!
> >>
> >>> From: Dave Hall [mailto:address@hidden
> >>
> >>
> >>> That's probably because I don't trust Kai.  Kai has a habit
> >>
> >> And he seems not to trust you in turn. How do we get out of this
> >> circle?
> >>
> >>
> >>> Kai (and atm others at probiz) have a habit of running their
> >>> own races.
> >>
> >> Just like you perhaps? Or like anybody else from time to time?
> >>
> >> In the end, Kai's fixes do help the project.
> >>
> >> Calm down, both of you.
>
> Posturing. I've already covered this above.
>
> >>
> >>> If the project was pbGroupWare that would be fine, we would
> >>> have to live with it.  It isn't pbGroupWare, the project will
> >>> never be pbGroupWare, so you need to work as part of the
> >>> team, not run your own race.
> >>
> >> OK; if you want probusines to fork out: just say so. Perhaps they
> >> consider
> >> it. I would hate it. But:
> >> I'm not setting any probusiness policies with regards to phpGW any
> >> more.
> >>
> >
> > I am not saying fork, I am saying the project is bigger than probiz and
> > address@hidden need to not act like this is a probiz project.  Probiz is
> > just one group of devs within the project, there are many others both
> > individual and companies.
>
> Posturing.
>
> This _is_ a probiz project. They have a lot invested in it and can
> rightly claim ownership. This is _your_ project. You have a lot
> invested in it and can rightly claim ownership. Being Open Source,
> _everyone_ can claim ownership in it and _noone_ can deny ownership to
> anyone else. It doesn't matter if the probiz guys declare themselves to
> be emperors of the project and wear crowns, so relax. As long as
> they're contributing to the forward progress of phpGW, don't get hung
> up on titles.
>
> You're going to have to live with the way they do things anyway as
> they're teammembers as well. And they're going to have to live with the
> way you do things as you're a teammember.
>
> >
> >> It would bring phpGW up into the top list of projects bringing devs to
> >> fork...
> >
> > No phpNuke (and derivatives) still top that list by a long way :P
> >
> > Shall we add the recent egw fork to that list too ;)
> >
> >>
> >>> I think a public discussion about the setup changes fips is
> >>> proposing should also be on this list, not via phone calls
> >>> and private email.
> >>
> >> You are mixing two things here. Obviously fips should have
> >> announced/discussed his changes before committing.
> >
> > No I am not.  It is more than before committing.  If it is just before
> > committing then we end up with problems like Kai's MaxDB patch.
> >
> > The object factory change should have been discussed before being
> > committed.  btw I would suggest that no one relies on the feature until
> > it is resolved.
> >
> > If there is no discussion then something may not be appropriate and the
> > time is wasted.
>
> Foot dragging.
>
> Oftentimes, more time is wasted in bottlenecks such as
> consensus-building and waiting for approval for others. To make the
> whole development progress faster, why not let anyone make the
> modifications they want to make to the code and if the mods make a
> drastic change to the way components interact, they should post the
> changes to the list first and let the group vote on whether to accept
> the changes or not.
>
> It would also be great to adopt unit tests and test-driven development
> practices to reduce the likelihood the mods  break something else in
> the codebase. Then you don't need to review every single commit.
>
> >
> >>
> >>> It has been less than a week since I posted about the need
> >>> for communication on this list.
> >>
> >> ... and Kai is the scapegoat now?
> >
> > No, but Kai's actions are good example of what not to do.  I am happy
> > to
> > admit that Kai's post about the phpdocs was a good approach, not
> > perfect, but a good improvement.  His approach to php -l was poor imho.
>
> Posturing. You can't compliment someone without also criticizing him?
> Don't answer. (Delete. Delete. Delete.)
>
> >
> >>
> >>> Either work (and communicate) as part of the team, not your
> >>> own little faction that thinks they can do what ever they want.
> >>
> >> It is not *MY* "fraction". People still have their own will, even if
> >> working
> >> for a company.
> >> AFAIK both fips and powerstat have prepared and submittet their
> >> changes in
> >> their spare time, independent of the copmpany (correct me if I'm
> >> wrong). If
> >> that should be important.
> >
> > I am happy to accept that the actions appear to be similar, but the
> > employer was the same.
>
> Posturing. How is that relevant? Don't answer.
>
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> And now: let's get back to work, shall we?
> >
> > I haven't read /. for 24hrs+ so no time lost ;)
>
> Whee. No one cares.
>
> >
> > Cheers
> >
> > Dave
> > --
> > Dave Hall (aka skwashd)
> > API Coordinator
> > phpGroupWare
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > --
> > Do you think if Bill Gates got laid in high school, do you think
> > there'd
> > be a Microsoft?  Of course not.
> > Underwear Goes Inside The Pants by Lazy Boy
>
> Alfonso Guerra (aka mrzippy)
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Phpgroupware-developers mailing list
> address@hidden
> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/phpgroupware-developers
>
>