[squeak-dev] Squeak Oversight Board Meeting Report for June 17, 2009

Please see

http://squeakboard.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/meeting-report-for-6172009/

Thanks,

Ken

On Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 11:39:13AM -0500, Ken Causey wrote:
> Please see
>
> http://squeakboard.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/meeting-report-for-6172009/

Thanks Ken,

With respect to:

> We spent the bulk of the meeting talking about 3.11 status.  We didn't
> come to any significant conclusions but resolved to increase communication
> with the release team and compile as much information as possible about the
> current status of this project and where it is going next.

I would like to request that, in the context of the 3.11 status, the board
also discuss the reestablishment of an update stream for Squeak releases.
Squeak has been without a usable update stream since Squeak 3.8. In my view,
this is simply inexcusable.

<rant>
Working on cool new tools to improve the update stream is not a substitute
for providing an actual working update stream to the community. Over a period
of several months^h^h^h^h^hyears, it has been really quite embarrassing to
watch various attempts to distribute updates in a frankenstream of Monticello
archives and 10MB monolithic images. This is followed by complaints that
nobody is paying any attention to the updates. Finally, we have great distress
and wringing of hands when it is discovered that our change histories have
been destroyed (because there was no update stream, d'oh!) and we can't figure
out our licensing because we don't even know who made changes, or how, when
and why the changes got into the image.
</rant>

Dave

On 6/19/09 2:33 AM, "David T. Lewis" <[hidden email]> wrote:

> I would like to request that, in the context of the 3.11 status, the board
> also discuss the reestablishment of an update stream for Squeak releases.
> Squeak has been without a usable update stream since Squeak 3.8. In my view,
> this is simply inexcusable.

And I saying this for two years now.
Seems Board don't see who works and who only talks .
And wonder why forks arise...

Edgar

On Fri, 2009-06-19 at 01:33 -0400, David T. Lewis wrote: I'm sure I must be misunderstanding your intent here.  The update stream
continues to exist and was used for both 3.9 and 3.10.  Of course for
the bulk of those two releases most of the updates triggered the
download and installation of a mcz (sometimes a mcd), although late in
3.10 use of MC was dropped and standard updates were used again.  It has
not been used for 3.11 so far because the release team has been
concentrating on infrastructure meant to increase automated testing and
reduce the effort required to harvest changes.  Once that is farther
along updates in some form should appear rather quickly, albeit perhaps
not in the classic update stream.
Regarding the perceived 'distress': there is no less information
regarding contributors in a MCZ than in a fileout.  It just adds another
location that has to be checked and is just not quite as easy to examine
as a small fileout.

I think you are misunderstanding the difficulties of the licensing
problems, it has absolutely nothing to do with whether a change was
submitted as a fileout or as an mcz.  We have the same information in
either case, perhaps even more in mcz.  At this point the main problem
is just trying to figure out what amount of change to a method, for
example, by a person is significant enough to warrant a rewrite if that
person has not submitted a license agreement and, if a rewrite is
needed, what procedure needs to be used for that.  Discussion with the
Software Freedom Consortium is going on but frankly the number of people
both willing to help with this and sufficiently knowledgeable of the
situation is so small that progress is exceedingly slow.

> Dave

Ken

On Fri, Jun 19, 2009 at 02:22:06PM -0500, Ken Causey wrote:
>
> I'm sure I must be misunderstanding your intent here.  The update stream
> continues to exist and was used for both 3.9 and 3.10.  Of course for
> the bulk of those two releases most of the updates triggered the
> download and installation of a mcz (sometimes a mcd), although late in
> 3.10 use of MC was dropped and standard updates were used again.

By "update stream" I mean an update stream exactly like what has been used
by Squeak Central and by other teams since then. I am not refering to the
various processes and tools that were used for 3.9 and beyond.

> It has not been used for 3.11 so far because the release team has been
> concentrating on infrastructure meant to increase automated testing and
> reduce the effort required to harvest changes.

Indeed. Good stuff I'm sure, but this is not the same thing as adhering
to a process that works well and that exists today.

Dave

Hi Ken,

>>>>> "Bernhard" == Bernhard Pieber <[hidden email]> writes:

>> =========== The Short Version ===========
>> We are currently awaiting legal advice from the Software Freedom
>> Law Center [3]. It is recommended that you avoid contributing to the
>> relicensing effort pending further notice

Bernhard> Has that changed? Probably I did miss the announcement?

Not exactly.  Are you familiar with the phrase "Adding people to a late
project generally makes it more late?".

The problem is that there are only a small number of people who know what the
problems are, and they're currently sorting out what those are, and then more
resources can be brought on if needed.  Adding *more* resources at the moment
who are not already familiar with the task will most likely just slow it down,
not speed it up.

I want this to happen as soon as possible, but it's a process that requires
precision because of the legal implications.

If and when more people are needed, you can be assured that a call for helpers
will be very loud and repeated. :) But at the moment, we're just getting all
of the key players talking with SFC to see how this final integration needs to
go from here.

--
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