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Subject: Re: questions about the "porting" project
From: =?iso-8859-1?Q?Louis_Su=E1rez-Potts?= <luispo@gmail.com>
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Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 16:51:05 -0400
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On 2012-05-16, at 16:07 , Kay Schenk wrote:

> well I am not quite THAT bored at the moment. ;)
>=20
> Thanks for all this. Yes, it did help. Our current situation, as with =
any open source project, is that you can only *build* what you can =
sustain.

More or less, yes: the no part being, I would maintain, that as long as =
one is honest about what is being done and can be done, then what counts =
as "sustainable" can, arguably, be relaxed. After all, the original Mac =
OS X builds maintained by the community members numbered two and had day =
jobs. The effort, fuelled by coffee and IM, was in a way not sustainable =
at all; but it inspired and proved a point, and so in the end, became =
sustainable. A key reason? Not the execs at Sun who liked Macs=97nearly =
all=97but the actuality of a noisy market. That is to say: marketing can =
help bridge the gulf between what is feasible by the resources at hand =
and what can be done, given the needed resources. (A 'resource' is a =
person, here, whose salary, in this case, is in effect, a debt paid back =
by the users and those who supply them with services at a cost.)
>=20
> Mostly I was asking about this to try to get a feel for what we should =
include as "official" builds vs not.

It's a difficult question, and I do wonder: do we need "official' or =
simply a limit on the size that can be held? When I set up the mirror =
system, I stratified it by "stable" and "contributor" (or the like) =
builds. The "stable" would map to "official," but the point was that it =
related more to builds that were *ready* to go than to builds that =
demanded privileged treatment because they were "official." A =
ready-to-go build could be ready simply because it attracted the right =
level of interest among the right sort of people, not because it had =
been deemed "official." Yes, there will be a degree of competition.

There may also be=97would be=97confusion among users, esp. the big ones, =
like governments. In this case, I'd suggest we have more of an argument =
to insist that they actually put their money where their code is.

As to corporate contributors: they have their own agenda, and it =
probably is pretty much most everyone else's. The point is that they =
will need to do what their clients want, no matter what.

>=20
> Considering Maho and Pedro (with FreeBSD) and Dario (OS/2) are =
involved with the project as committers, why wouldn't we include these =
builds on the mirrors? And, we have a Solaris participant as well now.
>=20
I think that if their builds are ready, great. We *could* instate a =
simple requirement, that Build A must have a roadmap leading to Build =
A.n+2, if not B. That is, two post-A releases, but that is probably not =
necessary. It's only put there, as a suggestion, to give users and =
contributors a sense of where to allocate their own energies.=20


> A further discussion I think. I would think any "ports" by AOO =
committers would at some point, be part of the official builds. But more =
to follow...


Good; yes, this is a worthy discussion, and I wish we could have had =
these at the old OOo community council. Certainly, many of us wanted =
that. But [redacted].

cheers
Louis=