ftp.xmission.com/2014.06.ftp.xmission.com.tar/ftp.xmission.com/pub/lists/fractdev/archive/fractdev.199912

Internet Message Format | 1999-12-24 | 10KB

From: Tim Wegner <[e-mail]>
Subject: Change of policy to release all patches?
Date: 07 Dec 1999 22:54:18 -0600

I've been reading "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric
Raymond. It's about the implications of freeware and open source,
and is quite provocative. Not to mention a good read.

One of his points is that open source projects should try to get as
many users and developers involved as possible. Therefore he
advocates releasing "early and often". Believe it or not, there were
intense times when Linus Torvalds released Linux kernels more
than once a day!

The pace of fractint development has slowed way down for a variety
of reasons, but it still goes on. The developer group (which includes
some users) sees incremental changes every few days or as often
as not these days every few weeks. But the public sees a release
only every year or so.

A few years ago we followed Eric's philosophy somewhat.  The
developer releases weren't public but the were accessible to some
very active artists and a larger group of developers, so each patch
would get an immediate user workout. These artists are now
spreading their attention among more pieces of software and are
not as active with fractint (this is understandable as far as I am
concerned) and some artists and developers have left compuserve.
It is no longer reasonable to expect developers and artist/users to
be compuserve members.

I've floated similar ideas to what I'm proposing below in the past, so
I hope I'm not being repetitive, but this is more radical. If we can
reach a consensus, I'd like to move on this right away.

What if we simply posted the source patches and developer
executables in a public place. They would be marked as developer
patch versions.

Raymond claims it is absolutely essential to get as many users
(and developers) testing as possible to fix bugs and accelerate
development. Users could still download the last stable release if
they didn't want to be on the "bleeding edge".

I favour trying this. I don't see that we have anything to lose, given
the current pace of development. Anyone have a contrary view?

The reasons against it in the past were to avoid a proliferation of
versions and extra support work for us. We'd request that these
versions only be uploaded by people who agree to keep the posted
version current. We would not promise to provide support (though
the larger community could) but we would receive bug reports.

I'm also advocating changing our source license (after an
contacting the original developers) to one of the standard open
source licenses. We discussed that a bit here already. I haven't
heard any real objection other than the obligation to contact past
authors. Quite frankly our current "license" is so unclear and badly
worded I don't think it means much anyway, so I don't see a big
obstacle to changing the license. Probably within a year or two the
code will all be rewritten anyway. The bulk of our existing code was
written by a relatively small group of people most of whom I can
reach. The license is a separate issue. We could make the
developer versions public now and take some time to change the
license.

We are up to 2000 patch 02  (two patches since  version 20.0 was
released) and we haven't discussed them here. Part of the reason
is this list isn't really private.  One reason I am proposing this
policy change is that if we don't have a policy to make all patches
public, it will be very hard to get the focus of development at least
partly on this list. Compuserve is a comfortable,  private place for a
small number of us, but it restricts us tremendously to have the
focus only there.

Of course alternatively I could boot you all out and manually
approve subscriptions <grin!> I think I would rather throw this to the
wind and make the executable and source patch fully public, and
continue let anyone subscribe to this list. I haven't publicly
promoted this list, but it has always been open to anyone. There
are 35 subscribers at the moment, and I'd say I know about 12 or
so of you. (You're all welcome or I wouldn't be posting this
message :-))

Comments are solicited from anyone!

Tim


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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Phil McRevis <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Change of policy to release all patches?
Date: 08 Dec 1999 18:11:27 -0700


Tim, it all sounds good to me.  Go ahead and modify the license and
open up the floodgates of distribution ;-).
--
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/>    Legalize Adulthood!
    ``Ain't it funny that they all fire the pistol,
      at the wrong end of the race?''--PDBT
[e-mail]    <http://www.thewho.net>

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: DeRobertis <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Change of policy to release all patches?
Date: 08 Dec 1999 21:03:21 -0500

Great idea! How about setting up anon. cvs and a public development mailing
list?

That way, anyone who wants them has the latest sources.



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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Phil McRevis <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: Change of policy to release all patches?
Date: 08 Dec 1999 19:43:19 -0700


In article <l03130312b474be49d311@[207.172.49.96]>,
    DeRobertis <[e-mail]>  writes:

> Great idea! How about setting up anon. cvs and a public development mailing
> list?

XMission can host a CVS anonymous repository.
--
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/>    Legalize Adulthood!
    ``Ain't it funny that they all fire the pistol,
      at the wrong end of the race?''--PDBT
[e-mail]    <http://www.thewho.net>

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "Paul N. Lee" <[e-mail]>
Subject: The Essential Guide to Open Source
Date: 17 Dec 1999 17:41:24 -0600

(Source: SunWorld)

Sunworld dives into the free software and open source communities to
compile an essential list of annotated pointers.

      http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=200895

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Subject: open source resource
Date: 24 Dec 1999 16:25 0000

Hi folks,

  Take a look over at http://www.sourceforge.net who seem to be
offering free services (CVS, listserv, archives and more) for open
source developers.  What do you think? Any good as a new home for
fractint development?

It'd put it in the sights of a lot of programmers methinks.

Cheers, and merry Xmas and an uneventful y2k rollover to
everyone!
         Robin.



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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Phil McRevis <[e-mail]>
Subject: Re: open source resource
Date: 24 Dec 1999 11:24:49 -0700


Its interesting, but what is their track record?  Currently I can set
up a CVS server and mailing list and FTP site and web site for
fractint all with XMission for no extra money on my part.  I know XM's
track record (excellent) and know the president personally.  So, that
seems like a useful resource, but I personally would feel more
comfortable setting up additional resources like a CVS server, etc.,
on XMission.  I am not the only developer, obviously, so a consensus
should be reached before making any final decisions.  Also, I would
defer to Tim's preference.
--
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/>    Legalize Adulthood!
    ``Ain't it funny that they all fire the pistol,
      at the wrong end of the race?''--PDBT
[e-mail]    <http://www.thewho.net>

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-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: tim gilman <[e-mail]>
Subject: Gone for a while.
Date: 25 Dec 1999 13:19:02 -0800

Soup Stoners,

I'm gone on vacation, to London for the next 4 weeks.  Until them, have
fun with Fractint and Happy New Year!

=- Tim Gilman



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