[Opensim-dev] Development models

[Justin Clark-Casey]

Alan M Webb wrote:
> 
> Justin
> 
> Aside from the obvious benefit of plausible deniability I'm intrigued to 
> know what the benefit of keeping a development model "oral only" is? I 
> know you've said "flexibility" but in this context isn't a primary goal 
> of a development process to limit flexibility in a sensible way? 
> Something that is not written down is hearsay, and leaves us with a 
> development methodology that is an emergent property of behavior over 
> time; which leaves everyone free to interpret it as they will.

I should make it clear that the idea that there may be advantages for an "oral tradition" may well only be my personal 
pov - it might be that as a group we don't have much written down simply because people hate writing documentation :)

I think the goal of a development process in this context is maintaining maximum flexibility to change and evolve the 
'processes' in response to the evolving situation.  For instance, I would observe that at the beginning of an open 
source project, the barriers to entry are often very low, since any contributions are welcome in the struggle for 
survival.  As a project grows up then it has the opportunity to start to build out the vision of its founder, which I 
think means deciding what kind of things is "in" and "out".  In this case, Darren's (MW's - our founder) vision was of a 
generic 3D platform which can be customized to different configurations via modules, as stated on our front page.

If you write down these 'processes', I think that you do inhibit the ability to evolve as the situation evolves.  But 
that's at the cost of increasing the uncertainty and nervousness of the very people who would build custom 
configurations.  So to fulfill the vision, one could argue that we do now need a touch more stuff written down.

I would say that the situation is different in commercial projects for lots of reasons, as they differ markedly from our 
situation.

Anyway, all this is very philosophical spouting and getting further than further from any serious technical discussion. 
  We can carry on this conversation by other means, though I'm pretty certain other people have already explored these 
topics more intelligently and in more depth than I have :)


> 
> Best regards
> Alan
> -------------------
> T.J. Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, NY
> 1-914-784-7286
> alan_webb at us.ibm.com
> 
> 
> From: 	Justin Clark-Casey <jjustincc at googlemail.com>
> To: 	opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> Date: 	04/17/2009 01:56 PM
> Subject: 	Re: [Opensim-dev] Development models
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> 
> 
> Mike Dickson wrote:
>  > Well, I know what I've observed over the last year and a half or so.
>  > But I agree that having something in writing that could be referred to
>  > would be a help.
>  >
>  > Mike
>  >
>  > On Fri, 2009-04-17 at 17:49 +0000, Diva Canto wrote:
>  >> Before you go into proposing a different development process for
>  >> OpenSim, make sure that you know what the current process is.
>  >> I don't see it on the Wiki, so maybe people don't know.
> 
> I'm happy to help formalize this a bit further on the wiki, based on 
> what has happened historically.  This would be
> written in as minimalistic and neutral a way as possible.  Believe it or 
> not, I have no love of extraneous process (I
> did work for IBM, after all :)
> 
> I think there is value in leaving this oral (since it allows more 
> flexibility), but perhaps the time for that is passing.
> 
> If anybody has good arguments for not doing this, please put them forward.
> 
> -- 
> justincc
> Justin Clark-Casey
> http://justincc.wordpress.com <http://justincc.wordpress.com/>
> _______________________________________________
> Opensim-dev mailing list
> Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Opensim-dev mailing list
> Opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
> https://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/opensim-dev


-- 
justincc
Justin Clark-Casey
http://justincc.wordpress.com