[Opensim-dev] Harvesting code from forks of Opensim

Wed May 27 00:28:57 UTC 2015

Fly Man writes:

*> and my -1 was meant to say "Please do not put things that no one knows
about in OpenSim"*

+1 for that -1. :-)

Your point applies to all FOSS code of course, not just Opensim.
Undocumented or minimally documented code is a liability, not an asset,
even if it's a million lines of alleged "awesomeness".

The D/C ratio is not a perfect metric, but when it's near zero then you
know that there's a problem.

On Wed, May 27, 2015 at 1:18 AM, Fly Man <fly.man.opensim at gmail.com> wrote:

> Let me answer most questions that have been shooting up in my personal
> mailbox which have to do with Opensim as a project.
>
> I'll start with perhaps the most easy part of the discussion: AuroraSim.
>
> AuroraSim is a derivated from OpenSim, forked on the 14th of October 2010
> after Rev (RevolutionSmythe) decided that Opensim wasn't going into the way
> he personally had seen. He decided to fork the Opensim tree and renamed it
> to AuroraSim. In the years following he upgraded parts of the source-code
> and added a set of new functional code parts knows as the aaFunctions.
>
> These functions are based on the code that he wrote at that moment for the
> AuroraSim branch. Remember, this is an OLDER copy of what the current
> Opensim branch is now. Most of the functions in there won't ever work in
> Opensim mainly because Opensim does not have these older hooks.
>
> In 2013 Rev was done with his education and decided to start working which
> brought AuroraSim to a slower moving branch and patches weren't applied
> instantly anymore. The last patch that was applied to the sourcecode was
> Jan 2014 and the project slowly died.
>
> So, currently there's no maintainer of any of the code that was/is in
> AuroraSim other then what is currently in that GitHub repository.
>
> Now here comes the part which Kevin already mentioned: "The fork is called
> WhiteCore"
>
> Indeed, WhiteCore is a fork of AuroraSim after I personally saw what was
> happening to AuroraSim. I had been watching the slow pace for a longer
> period of time and already had found 2 other people that had the same
> "issue". So in December 2013 AuroraSim was forked and re-based as
> WhiteCoreSim.
>
> Currently in development with 2 other developers, I am 1 of the 3 lead
> developers that actively maintain that "fork" although it's not even close
> to what the endgoal for it will be.
>
> 1 thing that we broke "on purpose" when we changed the name is the
> aaFunctions because only Rev knows exactly how they are meant to work. At
> the moment there's no other person who knows what exactly the functions are
> meant to do other then a better way to have NPC's spawn and some basic
> functions that mimic the osFunctions.
>
> Conclusion: There's no developer at the moment that can look into Rev's
> head from a distance and ask him how the functions are meant to work (if
> they still work at all) and my -1 was meant to say "Please do not put
> things that no one knows about in OpenSim"
>
>
>
> 2015-05-27 1:58 GMT+02:00 Dahlia Trimble <dahliatrimble at gmail.com>:
>
>> Just to clarify on the slight chance it was missed, I wasn't suggesting
>> anyone "fork off" in any sense of the term. Many forks, both public and
>> private, already exist and I suspect more will come about.  My hope is that
>> the community will survuve and even thrive beyond any code fork.
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 4:22 PM, Morgaine <morgaine.dinova at googlemail.com
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> Dahlia writes:
>>> *> I'd like to see disagreement and forks as a means to drive innovation
>>> rather than conflict.*
>>>
>>> More often than not, real project forking into separate projects (not
>>> just forking in the github sense) implies an inability or lack of desire to
>>> find a meeting of minds with technical peers.
>>>
>>> If requirements are dramatically different then project forking can be a
>>> very reasonable way forward, and to the benefit of everybody.  But if the
>>> requirements are really quite similar then forking is more likely an
>>> indication of inflexibility and intransigence by one or both parties.  The
>>> communal engineering process has probably failed.
>>>
>>> This is a technical project, so it's inherently different to discussing
>>> the merits of cat pictures -- discussions can be objective.  A rationally
>>> presented suggestion or even a strong criticism presented in good faith is
>>> not a reason for telling people to fork off.  If that is the response then
>>> it's a sign of extreme project ill health.
>>>
>>> Negative feedback is intrinsic to good engineering, and all good
>>> engineers embrace it.  That's not theoretical.  Without it a project's
>>> direction would never change to take into consideration the bitter lessons
>>> of experience.
>>>
>>> Morgaine.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 11:35 PM, Dahlia Trimble <
>>> dahliatrimble at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Apparently there is still a fair bit of passion about this platform and
>>>> I prefer to see this in a manner where people can use the code in a way
>>>> they see fit and to (hopefully) contribute back something or pay it forward
>>>> in other ways as appropriate. I'm not opposed to forks but I'd hope civil
>>>> discourse can be maintained even through the times when much disagreement
>>>> looms. I would hope that various forks and branches could benefit from each
>>>> other and the community as a whole can thereby benefit. I'd like to see
>>>> disagreement and forks as a means to drive innovation rather than conflict.
>>>>
>>>> On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 2:14 PM, Morgaine <
>>>> morgaine.dinova at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Good data, thanks Cinder.  It doesn't look like death to me.
>>>>>
>>>>> You clearly have some elite query-foo skills, can you generate a
>>>>> historical list of commits per month and per year?  This is a very strong
>>>>> way of debunking allegations of death!  :P
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 10:05 PM, Cinder Roxley <
>>>>> cinder at alchemyviewer.org> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On May 26, 2015 at 2:59:54 PM, Morgaine (
>>>>>> morgaine.dinova at googlemail.com) wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm just an observer on this project, albeit a very long term one,
>>>>>> dating back to near the beginning.  One thing that long-term observers are
>>>>>> well qualified to do is to confirm or to deny the veracity of allegations
>>>>>> of long-term trends.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Mike Chase's allegation that
>>>>>>
>>>>>> "OpenSim is slowly dieing (IMO) from neglect"
>>>>>>
>>>>>> is clearly unfounded since commits show no sign of stopping.  I
>>>>>> haven't checked the rate of commits so perhaps Mike has more information in
>>>>>> this regard.  I welcome better information.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> https://www.openhub.net/p/opensimulator/commits/summary
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>> Cinder Roxley
>>>>>> Sent with Airmail
>>>>>>
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>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
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>>>>
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