Mumble Trolling

[Octal450]

@Israel

NOT OFFICAL, but to allow us to put it on the wiki, as an alternative. No official mumble channels exist or will exist! We simply want it on the wiki, so people will see it.

Regards,

[IAHM-COL]

you must should be able to promote your channel. In the wiki and elsewhere.

[Octal450]

?
The sense you are making is NOT!

[IAHM-COL]

Josh! The sense you are making is NOT

[legoboyvdlp]

I think Israel means 'you should be allowed to promote it'.

[lastmin-II]

Hi All.
For those informed of Curtis' Forum, you will notice Thorsten and Curtis hijacking of the Mumble trolling thread for political leverage. Totally yikes (puking time!)

You're spinning it the wrong way. For your information, I'm the guy who contributed to drift the thread off-topic. Both Thorsten and Curtis replied to my posts and to other people's ones. Curtis also tried to steer the thread back on track, while providing constructive advice to promote an environment where some mutual respect is there, which is exactly what most of us want. They didn't hijack the thread. On the other hand, if you read carefully, you'll notice that I tried to show the (potentially) positive side of your FGMembers project, but I couldn't be silent regarding its drawbacks either. I saw that my first message was cross-posted here (twice) so I guess that you've read the others as well.

I believe that the result of the discussion in the original thread is positive, and there are a few constructive suggestions for you guys, in order to create the conditions for your repository to finally be compliant with upstream FlightGear standards, and with the established rules of free software in general:

1) form a group of trusted maintainers;
2) implement quality control;
3) implement serious GPL compatibility auditing.

Some of your members are doing a good work. However, you cannot expect that FlightGear changes any established rules and policies just because you don't like them, or prefer to ignore them. Have a look at other serious free software projects out there, and see how they work in the real world. Your rejection of the rules might give you the illusion that things can be done more easily and quickly, but then no one will trust what you're doing either. Most importantly, no one among the upstream crew, nor everybody else, can be expected to fix and clean things up for you just because you don't care. I guess that it's your turn now, to show and prove that you want to be considered as people who care. The conditions mentioned above seem clear, reasonable and fair.

Besides, after browsing this forum for a while, I suggest that you guys stop posting insulting, abusive and gratuitous statements. You are deliberately distorting and abusing concepts like "freedom" and "free speech". Let's stop that, please. If some of you are feeling neglected by the FlightGear project for whatever reason, then man up, do your homework and implement the conditions listed above. I don't see any use in this noisy, endless bickering, and you're not helping either side: the ball is in your court, therefore either you guys do what is needed, or you just stop complaining for not being recognized as you wish, OK?

By the way, this message is the result of my own opinion and my own initiative, nothing else. There's no "strategy" whatsoever hidden behind my words, just plain common sense, so please don't make up weird theories about them.

All the best

LM

[IAHM-COL]

Hi All.
For those informed of Curtis' Forum, you will notice Thorsten and Curtis hijacking of the Mumble trolling thread for political leverage. Totally yikes (puking time!)

You're spinning it the wrong way. For your information, I'm the guy who contributed to drift the thread off-topic. Both Thorsten and Curtis replied to my posts and to other people's ones. Curtis also tried to steer the thread back on track, while providing constructive advice to promote an environment where some mutual respect is there, which is exactly what most of us want. They didn't hijack the thread.

Hi Lastmin and Welcome to the Forums.
Quite an introduction of yourself you made here, which means you are the kind of people we enjoy working with.

Let me answer you in parts:

Firstly, about Hijacking.

There is indeed a hijacking of the thread. As in many other Threads in Curtis forum; where you will see Thorsten jump to present a propagandize version of what FGMEMBERS is, and how FGMEMBERS is threatening to FlightGear as a project. It is not rare this happens due to someone presenting the word "FGEMEMBERS'" sometimes in somehow random topics, or in others, as it was in your case, because you directly mentioned and proposed some sort of a defense. It was a no brainer that Thorsten was showing up abruptly, and with no surprise he did.
So, I am OK with your opinion suggesting that there is not such hijacking, and you can even see it as a series of patterned coincidences. I don't think so. Really.

On the other hand, I call it "Hijack" as an humorous uptake on Edward Bugman, who suggested FGMEMBERS was hijacking mumble. Somehow, and someway (that I guess, really you dont care about, but if you want more details, let me know). In any case, FGMEMBERS had never attempted at hijacking mumble, but Thorsten readily repeated his "hijacking" of many threads in Curtis' Forum with his propaganda lines. Including, now in this case, somehow coincidently, a thread about mumble.

See? Mumble hijacking!

Either get the humor and play on words or not. At the end, it is Curtis' Forum and their rules.

[IAHM-COL]

On the other hand, if you read carefully, you'll notice that I tried to show the (potentially) positive side of your FGMembers project, but I couldn't be silent regarding its drawbacks either. I saw that my first message was cross-posted here (twice) so I guess that you've read the others as well.

LOL.
yes. I read it.
Very kind words. Thanks for that.

And very brave of speaking those words in that forum. I always will wonder (regardless of what you may say) of whether that act was such naive act because you did not know the sharks that swim in those waters (the Curtis' Forum) or brave regardless of knowing it.

[IAHM-COL]

I believe that the result of the discussion in the original thread is positive, and there are a few constructive suggestions for you guys, in order to create the conditions for your repository to finally be compliant with upstream FlightGear standards, and with the established rules of free software in general:

1) form a group of trusted maintainers;
2) implement quality control;
3) implement serious GPL compatibility auditing.

I don't think there is such positive outcome. I saw Thorsten and Curtis complacent that you subdued or agreed (whatever that is). And the perpetuation of misconceptions about what FGMEMBERS is.

So, to clarify.

FGMEMBERS does not attempt to be compliant with "upstream" FlightGear standards. Basically because those are not about standards, but about power and control.

In addition, there is not such set of "rules of free software in general". Let's talk about it a little bit , but I recommend you read Raymond's "the cathedral and bazaar" for additional clarity on my perspectives.

1. A group of trusted maintainers.

The word maintainer here, as it is pertinent to "FG rules" indicate that there is an "Aircraft Owner" who has somehow a final word about it. In the case of FGMEMBERS this does not make sense. We don't have aircraft owners per se, and any one in the group has access and liberty to modify (I read improve) any of the aircraft in the collection. We don't operate under "this is my aircraft" approach.

Nor we can. There are more than 850 aircraft total in the collection, and the philosophy of "maintainer" just really creates and split between maintained aircrafts and virtually orphan ones. The "maintained" are jealously protected by some 'dude' (see? control and power). The orphans are left unmodified for decades. Partly because no-one really knows at the end of the day if it is maintained or not; and thus whether it is safe to simply modify.

I had unvested the collection of "Maintainers" and I've killed the figure of Aircraft-king. It works great in my opinion. And it works best for a more consistent and unrestricted approach accross the board.

More importantly, it facilitates cooperative attitudes, rather than establish a pyramid of operations where rules drop down as a hammer. (or a cathedral according to Raymond).

Then it comes the problem of commit rights: which you briefly had mentioned as well.

Firstly, FGMEMBERS is distributable (or a decentralized system). The major consequence here is, that EVERYONE (read everyone in the world can commit) [WHAT!!! WHY!?? many ask horrified]
Well this is how it works with commit priviledges. There is the "fork" button in github, which creates a clone of any aircraft (or repository) in someone's sandbox. There is not restricting that person liberty to commit to his own fork, therefore, effectivey being a comitter.

Yo don't need to be able to commit directly to FGMEMBERS's repository to be able to stand your aircraft aside, make your own sandbox and have commit priviledges on your own sandbox. That is distributed. It gives you a voice. (or the developer). It gives you a way to present your proposal without messing no-one else work immediately. On top of that it allows you to join the cooperation via pull requests.

In addition Github platform is usually very transparent to show you network trees of repositories and who is working on them, who is more progressed, who has more branches (a.k.a more popular --tipically a good example of wellness) etc.

See? think hard about this. We dont need "trusted" committers, or aircraft kings, in a world where everyone can fork, improve and send a pull request. It takes a few minutes to send our way a step (forward or not).

In the case of FGADDon, thou, and their rules, they have a centralized system (subversion) where no-one has commit access. It is just to share the code, not to share the ability to create and participate. Then the subversion starts having a trusted key-ring of known "safe" contributors, which have access to the code, because a long time demostrated knowledge of the code. And they all write directly to the only-single one repository. If you damage something there, you damage it for everyone (you did not mess "your fork" -- you messed the whole thing!)

That is why a subversion repository, centralized and monolithic is fragile, and you can't freely give keys openly. And that attempt to compete in openness with FGMEMBERS may end up having unexpected consequences.

Think about it for a second. Even long-standing knowledgful commiters keep sending wrong commits our way (FGMEMBERS rebase FGADDON), and we end up detecting these and correcting them, ie

https://github.com/FGMEMBERS/PC-9M/issues/1

Which brings an interesting example of the problems of centralized repos, and the huge advantages of distributed ones.

[IAHM-COL]

2) implement quality control;

Sure we do. As the example above demostrated, FGMEMBERS is usually very fast to detect errors in commits, unflyable states, quirks and others. And we are also very fast to fix those usually

That is the consequence of having implemented the most powerful QC system the world of OpenSource can offer: Valuing your user.

The user is who ultimately does the most effective bug hunting you can design. And in many cases they'll bring us the fix as well. And if not, they usually come as the most willing test-pilot out there, which in many case proven, they seem to be willing to try out the plane again, just after some experiment or trial to fix the aircraft.

Do you want another example over the PC-9 above, Here you have:

https://github.com/FGMEMBERS/A320neo/issues/2

Look how this user detected the copilot issue on the family, tested, found most of the fix, and all by himself. That is our finest QC operation on action.

Our QC is focused toward empowering the user to test, report, identify and ultimately help (in a way or another) fix the issue. After all, that user knows the quirk on that plane better than anyone else.

Look, to be sincere, the prediction that FGMEMBERS planes werent' flying just out how open the system is, is long due to succeed. Many of our planes do have improvements at several levels of integration that are already lacking in FGADDon. and this in spite of the "exquisite" QC applied on FGADDon in the form of "entry barrier"

So, again, this is a rule that does not exist for OpenSource management, or at least it can be the FG way or the highway, because that's how we end up in the fast-lane most of the time.