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

[Kyle G]

Morgaine thanks for the excellent summary of our options.  I now understand
how opensource works a little better & see the logic on both sides of the
argument. Whatever the core dev's decide to do I am sure will be done fairly
now & I will not bother about this issue anymore...Thanks for keeping us in
the loop as much as possible...

-----Original Message-----
From: opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de
[mailto:opensim-dev-bounces at lists.berlios.de] On Behalf Of Mike Dickson
Sent: Tuesday, October 20, 2009 8:13 AM
To: opensim-dev at lists.berlios.de
Subject: Re: [Opensim-dev] The notion of "core" ... looking ahead

Strongly agree with your analysis Morgaine. Right on target.

Mike

On Tue, 2009-10-20 at 11:41 +0000, Morgaine 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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