[Opensim-dev] [Non-DoD Source] Re: Still on Sim and Phys Frames per Second (FPS)

Tue Nov 17 15:43:17 UTC 2015

Hi Douglas,

there is no bias against anyone. You are definitely not reading this
correctly.

There is a strong sentiment for independence and against outside
control. Part of this is that we will reject patches that combine
code we want with code we don't want.

The ideal patch is a single item of functionality.

I do say that your work as you submitted to us would have been
easier to accept if it had been in about 20 or so small, incremental
patches, one every few days, instead of large units of functionality
that it takes the reviewing developer many hours to analyze and
integrate.

I myself, in fact, shepherded some of your work in when patch
generation failed to produce a clean merge; I pulled your github and
did the integration work on it just so this could progress beyond
the back-and-forth patch submission issues that the patch was
plagued by.

Also, I'm sure you will agree that I am definitely in favor of
actually reporting real, good stats. Witness the work I did to, in
spite of the need to keep legacy users happy and the social worlds
working, on both server and viewer side to integrate proper stats
reporting. My viewerside work is in my github repo,
singularityviewer fork, it is waiting to be merged by the singu
team. My serverside work was merged today, please refer to the
relevant commits as well as the discussion on the mailing list.

The above certainly doesn't indicate a bias against you, far from
it. Working together, however, means just that. Together. It's quite
hard to do with your project because you do a lot of closed-doors
development and then publish whole swathes of code in a single go.
That isn't something people in Opensim core can deal with very well,
because it takes time to review.
Also, working together means accepting that we may not want parts of
your work because they are too specifically tailored to your needs.
Our current basic use case is, as one of my detractors put it, a
"graphically dense chat window". It's what makes up 90%+ of all
Opensim users. Obviously, we can't take any patches that would break
it for those users.
"Take this and put it in!" will never work for us, we will always
review and dissect, then decide what is useful to us.

As for the funding, I would assume you only approached US citizens.
You certainly never approached me. Strange. I never knew Opensim was
NOFORN. Well, so be it.

We're still open to the give and take that working together would
entail, but as long as our work is voluntary, we will tend to
minimize the work we have to do.

Also, we don't want things like binding roadmaps, deadlines and
mandatory milestones. Most of us have enough of that in our
respective day jobs and companies. This is volunteer work and at the
end of the day we do it because we like doing it, for as long as we
like and to the degree that we like.

- Melanie

On 16/11/2015 20:11, Maxwell, Douglas CIV USARMY RDECOM ARL (US) wrote:
> If I'm reading this response correctly, the biases against us have been confirmed.  As Sean pointed out in another message, we tried every way we could to conform to your so called submission guidelines.  The feedback was in some cases bizarre and it made us wonder if you were just looking for excuses to reject.  We now know the truth.  
> 
> We are making a significant investment in this technology and my intention was to work with you to ensure dual use.  This was made very clear in the beginning of our engagements with your group and re-enforced many times over last summer.  It disturbs me to see the juvenile behavior on this mailing list and the lost opportunity this represents for your group.
> 
> With regards to funding, nowhere does it say the open simulator requires payment for code integration.  We gave it to you free and clear, no strings attached.  I understand the work involved for integration activities and if you had just asked, I would have worked something out with you.  In fact, I tried on three different occasions to fund the developers and was rejected each time.  The Overte foundation would have been a great venue for grant funding, but I was told it wasn't designed to accept funds.  Its a non-profit, so why you didn't want to get your accounting together is beyond me.  My next move was to approach you individually and this ended with the performers not completing the paperwork necessary to complete the funding actions.  I can't help you if you won't help yourselves.
> 
> Douglas Maxwell, Ph.D.
> Science and Technology Manager
> Virtual World Strategic Applications
> U.S. Army Research Lab
> Human Research & Engineering Directorate
> (c) (407) 242-0209
> 
> ________________________________________
> From: opensim-dev-bounces at opensimulator.org [opensim-dev-bounces at opensimulator.org] on behalf of Melanie [melanie at t-data.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2015 9:02 PM
> To: opensim-dev at opensimulator.org
> Subject: [Non-DoD Source] Re: [Opensim-dev] Still on Sim and Phys Frames per Second (FPS)
> 
> 
> The "group with professional developers and a Budget" basically
> assumed that we would accept every patch they submitted, although
> none of the submitted patches adhered to our guidelines. The patches
> they provided were "megapatches" with no clear delineation of
> functionality and also copious whitespace changes that served to
> obfuscate code that we would not want by hiding it in megabyte-sized
> patch files.....
> 
> I myself was the one to actually pull from their github and clean up
> the resulting merge and even so there was code that slipped through
> that we had to revert because it was detrimental to the experience
> of our users.
> 
> That may have been avoided if some of that "Budget" (sic) had come
> into the pockets of the established developers. For some reason you
> decided to capitalize the word "budget" but that doesn't capitalize
> OpenSim development. Not by one penny.
> 
> After refusing to conform to our standards and, yes, allowing us to
> pick which of their work we would want, they decided to go it alone.
> Needless to say, none of their work I'm aware of is in any way
> suited to improve the "graphically dense chat window" that our
> actual users want.....
> 
> No one has the time to wade through the MOSES Github and extract the
> tidbits we may want, so we can just assume it will be a divergent
> version that will wind up geared to a different audience. Which is
> not a bad thing. Maybe their thing is yours and you may want to
> consider joining the army. It's not ours.
> 
> However, there are thousands of actual living, breathing users out
> there looking to us to keep their "graphically dense chat window"
> working.
> 
> - Melanie
> 
> On 11/11/2015 02:43, dz wrote:
> 
>> YOU are  joking   right...
>>
>> You don't have a roadmap,  but  publicly denigrate  supporters  who try and
>> get the  patches that are important to them incorporated???    I  didn't
>>  bring it up,   Nebadon  did   trying to assert that  NONE of the  work
>> MOSES is doing is important  because they are  just  doing their own
>> thing...   You cant have it both ways...  Either  put up the Roadmap   or
>> deal with continuing issues  with  the conflicting interests  of the
>> developer groups.
>>
>> You refuse to admit that there is more than one entity involved in this
>> discussion  and that other members of core  +1'd the patch.
>>
>> You wont answer the MOST important  question about  why ANY project manager
>>  would expect  ANYONE to continue participating in the project  after
>>  asking them to jump through hoops  to get the work they contributed to be
>> accepted  and then  just  say  " some users on some grid  complained to ME"
>>  so   TOO BAD.
>>
>>  I just want to make sure that is  your  official position on how we should
>>  make decisions  about  what gets added to the project...
>> Participation on THIS list  isn't valued  any more than private comments
>>  about  inherently incorrect and obsolete blinking lights.
>>
>> You snubbed a group  with professional developers and a Budget willing to
>> help solve your problems.
>> You continue to repeat the SAME mistakes   that generated this whole
>> discussion .
>>
>> Your  project mandate is that OpenSim be  a working framework for EVERYONE
>>  who wants an open source tool  to explore  this new frontier...
>> but  now  your position is that its future  is only focused on being a
>> graphically dense  chat window....
>>
>> so sad....
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 4:58 PM, Melanie <melanie at t-data.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Correct. They also have FUNDING. The apache foundation has lot of
>> > paid permanent staff, as well as money for bounties and hired
>> > programmers.
>> >
>> > Of course they can have the luxury of a roadmap.
>> >
>> > Same goes for other projects that do that level of organization.
>> >
>> > - Melanie
>> >
>> > On 11/11/2015 01:53, Glenn Martin wrote:
>> > > To me, this has always been the major weakness of open source software.
>> > > I've seen this on many other projects.  There is a "core" in charge but,
>> > > ultimately, they focus only on things that they need for their work.
>> > When
>> > > somebody suggests a feature, the response is usually of the form "that
>> > > would be a great addition!  If you could code that up, please submit it".
>> > > I completely understand the feeling there, but it's hard to build up a
>> > > major user base that way (the projects continue to stay in "toy" phase).
>> > >
>> > > The truly successful open source projects DO have a roadmap and they DO
>> > > code towards it.  They are real projects that just happen to be open
>> > source.
>> > >
>> > > Glenn
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > NOTICE: The opinions and thoughts in this email are my own and do not
>> > > reflect those of any other person or organization.
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 7:31 PM, Melanie <melanie at t-data.com> wrote:
>> > >
>> > > > You keep on about organizational things like a defined roadmap and
>> > > > documentation. These are things generally produced by organized and
>> > > > PAID bodies.
>> > > >
>> > > > Core is a team of developers who just as soon let the code do the
>> > > > talking. Few of us have any talent for doing big writeups and these
>> > > > few are doing other things that take up their time, mostly in academia.
>> > > >
>> > > > Core is consensus-based and there is no "boss" to set out a roadmap
>> > > > everyone else has to follow. We all volunteer our time and
>> > > > creativity for this project and to most of us, this is a
>> > > > recreational activity, not work.
>> > > >
>> > > > Admittedly, the project could profit from some guidance, but that
>> > > > same guidance would likely lead to a loss of active developers, as
>> > > > people who volunteer their time want to do what they like to do, not
>> > > > what some roadmap tells them to. This discussion has been had before.
>> > > >
>> > > > If it were at all possible, I would certainly take up that mantle,
>> > > > but that would dis-mantle the team as it stands now. The current
>> > > > team isn't interested in fulfilling expectations other than those of
>> > > > their own and the users they are working with.
>> > > >
>> > > > For most of the team, that is users of social virtual worlds who
>> > > > could care less about accurate stats, but do care about three green
>> > > > lights on the lag meter. They actually don't even care if the stats
>> > > > show 11 or 55, as long as the lag meter is green.
>> > > >
>> > > > I have had people (in other grids) tell me "This place is so
>> > > > laggy!". I then would move my avatar around to test responsiveness
>> > > > and find that there is no lag, so I would ask them "Why do you
>> > > > consider this laggy? I can't see any lag?" and get "The lag meter
>> > > > shows the sim is lagging" as a reply. These people, several people
>> > > > in multiple grids, then announced to be going back to SL where there
>> > > > is no lag.
>> > > >
>> > > > Go figure.
>> > > >
>> > > > We are there to make things work for the majority of our users.
>> > > > Sorry to say, MOSES and scientists are not a majority. The thousands
>> > > > of social grid users spread across all the virtual worlds are.
>> > > >
>> > > > - Melanie
>> > > >
>> >
>> >
>>
>>
>>
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