Re: [hylafax-users] new community site

[marthter <marthter@xxxxxxxx>]

My own opinion as a ~2 year hylafax user, ~2 year mailing list reader, 
occasionally-helpful (I hope) list contributor, and long time 
opinion-haver is...


Darren Nickerson wrote  on 02/11/05 06:51 PM:

> "Lee Howard" <faxguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> > I've updated the content of the web pages, including the How-To, and 
> > I've removed some other content that I felt had become so outdated 
> > that the information would be better off gone than left in-place. 
> > I've also made an effort to simplify the site... making it easier for 
> > newcomers (who are probably the ones that need most to use the site) 
> > to navigate and get to information useful to them.  I have not yet 
> > finished updating the HylaFAQ, as I imagine that it will take a fair 
> > amount of time to clean that up (content as well as fixing some link 
> > names and things).
Quite a lot of work, and at first glance, good improvements to the 
usability of the site.  Thank you, Lee.

> > I've also started uploading "sub-releases" to the Sourceforge HylaFAX 
> > site.  My thoughts behind sub-releases are to simply label a cut of 
> > CVS HEAD at regular, frequent (like every month during periods of 
> > "heavy" development) as a sub-release and hang it up on there.  The 
> > intent of this is to increase exposure to new developments and fixes 
> > in the code without needing to battle through the sometimes lengthy 
> > release process.
>
>
> Lee,
>
> As you know, nightly CVS snapshots have been available at 
> ftp.hylafax.org for years. They're at:
>
>    ftp://ftp.hylafax.org/source/hylafax-SNAPSHOT.tar.gz
>
> The most recent one is dated 2 November and was cut at 1:30AM PST. 
> Anyone who wants to follow the bleeding edge of HylaFAX development 
> can either check out CVS themselves, or use this snapshot.
>
> If you are going to change the HylaFAX release process, I think you 
> should do it in a democratic way and involve the hylafax-devel 
> community in an open discussion and a vote. That's the way myself and 
> many other long-standing contributors have always worked, the entire 
> reason for hylafax.org was to break out of the Ivory Tower development 
> model into a democratic one (as close as possible to the Bazaar). I 
> know you haven't always agreed with the concensus decisions, but they 
> are exactly that - concensus decisions that have been reached after 
> open, public discussions.
>
> I'm curious - when do you decide it's time to cut a new release of the 
> Lee Howard HylaFAX? On the -devel mailing list there's a 
> well-established, time-tested orderly process of feature freeze, then 
> code freeze, then bugfixing followed by betas, release candidates and 
> finally release. Each of these steps are done democratically, with 
> parties being free to influence the process as much as they like. What 
> will your release policy be, and will you be the ultimate decider of 
> when a new sub-release is cut or will you involve others in the decision?
>
> As I said before, I can only hope you have been responsible about 
> this, and that you have consulted most of the active developers and 
> secured their support for this change. Otherwise, it seems 
> irresponsible and will only serve to confuse and fragment the community.
>
> > Why have I set up the Sourceforge HylaFAX site?
> >
> > Truthfully, it's an act of mercy.  The hylafax.org domain registrant 
> > is desireous, as you may well be able to tell, to use the domain for 
> > commercial purposes.  This is the registrant's right.  The recent 
> > announcement of a sponsored site reworking will likely only result in 
> > further commercialization.  In the past I have been very much opposed 
> > to this trend, and it has caused too much friction.  Certainly we 
> > should be able to understand the registrant's desire to profit from 
> > the investment that has been made and the rather lustrous community 
> > that has sprung up around it.  I can understand that, and my hope, 
> > then, is that the existence of the Sourceforge HylaFAX site will 
> > allow the hylafax.org registrant to proceed without any further 
> > complaints from me. 

Lee, why do you insist on repeating these personal attac... oh sorry 
never mind, wrong side of argument : -)

But seriously, Lee has a point, "hylafax.org" is not quite so "org-ish" 
as lots of other orgs like apache or fsf.  The whois record is perfectly 
clear about who hylafax.org "is".  And for lots of folks, that in itself 
would be reason enough to look for a more public-domain place to 
congregate, regardless of how many sponsored links the current domain 
puts or doesn't put on the site, the rpms, mailing list footer, etc.  
(By the way, having only one person in charge of the sourceforge project 
could be just as worrisome.)  Personally I find the links a bit annoying 
but quite tolerable in the sense that I don't have the motivation to 
change it so I tolerate it because it gets me to the great software and 
"lustrous" community.  Lee apparently sees it as a bit more extreme, 
enough to motivate him to act on it, so I commend him for doing that.  
Again, his actions give me some good things to ponder... If hylafax.org 
is a community, who decided that ifax.com is the "commercial sponsor" as 
is mentioned several places on the web site, and could we un-decide 
that?  If "the community" (hypothetically) incorporated itself as a 
legal association or non-profit organization, would the current 
registrant turn over the hylafax.org domain to that new entity?

I don't see the starting of a sourceforge project as "irresponsible" or 
that anyone should have been "consulted", that's the beauty of it, if 
you see something you don't like, you can change it instead of just 
griping.  It is not the end of the world, projects fork all the time.  
Sure it may lead to some confusion for a while, but it might also foster 
some improvements.

Anyway, time will tell and I for one will be on both lists for a while.  
If it becomes clear that one is more useful, maybe I will drop off of 
the other.  We'll see.  But in the meantime, can't we all just get along 
(tm)?

Regards.

Martin


p.s. I don't discount the benefits or contributions that Darren and/or 
ifax have made to hylafax.  That deserves a thank you too.


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