[Opensim-dev] The notion of "core" ... looking ahead

[James Stallings II]

Very well played Morgaine :)
Cheers!

James/Hiro

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 6:41 AM, Morgaine <morgaine.dinova at googlemail.com>wrote:

> Greetings.
>
> Three points of fact:
>
>
>    1. Opensim is now in Git, a *distributed* SCM that promotes *
>    distributed* development.
>    2. Opensim devs have declared many times that Opensim is not a product,
>    but a platform or toolkit from which products can be made.
>    3. Opensim distros have started to appear (Diva++), consistent with
>    point #2.
>
>
> These 3 points taken together suggest the following rather likely course of
> future history:
>
>
>    - Git will be used in the manner in which it was intended.  In other
>    words, there will be an explosion of Git community repos featuring personal
>    branches created by Opensim user/developers outside of the core group, in
>    much the way that happened with the LL viewer.  It's likely to happen even
>    more strongly in the case of Opensim, because Git promotes this and because
>    Opensim code is already nicely modular, which cannot be said of the LL
>    viewer.
>
>
>    - As happened with community viewers, many Git community repos will
>    gain high reputations for new features, better performance, more robustness,
>    expanded data types, higher scalability, fewer barriers to open teamwork,
>    alternative interop models, better APIs, and a hundred other things that an
>    extended community can tackle but which the small core team has never
>    thought of, or not had the manpower to pursue.
>
>
>    - Opensim distro builders will build their distros from all the best
>    features available in all the best known and most respected Git repos,
>    cherry picking to make their distros special in whatever way suits them.
>    Distro builders will of course also provide their own Git repositories,
>    swelling the repo numbers even further and giving them the prestige of a
>    good distro name.  The Opensim equivalents of RedHat and Ubuntu will emerge,
>    both as distros and as companies, and will become formidable.
>
>
> The above doesn't require much vision because it's almost certain to
> happen, simply because the tools are right, the incentives exist, people
> like doing their own thing, and the precedent offered by the community
> viewers is very strong.  The only big uncertainty is to what extent it will
> happen, and how much control the core group will retain amid the plethora of
> distributed repositories.
>
> The latter is very hard to predict.  However, two extreme cases might give
> some idea of how things might pan out:
>
>
>    - If the core group remains closed, secretive and exclusionary, this
>    promotes the emergence of more respected upstream alternative repos as
>    replacement Opensim Git masters.  If disputes like the current one get
>    really bad, there will be wholesale forks of core, destructive competition,
>    politically driven non-sharing, and very damaging press and public
>    perception.
>
>
>    - If the core group becomes open and transparent, and embraces
>    distributed community development for core features, this promotes the role
>    of the core repo as the single (or at least the leading) upstream master, a
>    respected concentrator of the best features from broad Opensim community
>    development.
>
>
> I have a strong predisposition for openness so please take this advice with
> a pinch of salt, but I believe it's correct nevertheless.  If the current
> core group wishes all the accolades and respect that come from a highly
> popular and well run community open source project, I believe that the right
> course of action is to become *organizationally* open and transparent as
> well.
>
> Perhaps reaching version 1.0 and creating an open foundation might be a
> good time for that to happen.
>
> Regards, and much admiration for the great achievements so far. :-)
>
>
> Morgaine.
>
>
>
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>
>


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