Free Flight, Free Speech

Edward D'Avergne Bugman wrote:Hi all,

While making some small updates to the FlightGear hangar page of the
wiki ( http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_hangars ), I stumbled
across an interesting 'backdoor' addition:

http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php?ti ... ldid=79652
http://wiki.flightgear.org/index.php?ti ... ldid=82285

This inserts the following text right in the middle of the "Official
hangars" section:

FGMEMBERS :: Git Hangar (for Git Distribution and development of
FG aircrafts | Aircraft repositories individually)

Searching through the wiki, there appears to be a trend by FGMEMBERS
proponents in inserting such small additions (note - some are no
longer proponents). This could possibly be part of the strongly
stated and undisputed goal of destroying the official FGData/FGAddon
core infrastructure to replace it with FGData+submodules/FGMEMBERS
(see https://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic. ... 10#p256448
and the links therein - if you are still around ThorstenB, sorry for
misspelling your name, the thread is now locked). Some other minor
wiki changes include:

- http://wiki.flightgear.org/New_to_FlightGear - See the text
"Also, note that those using the Git version of FlightGear may choose
to update their aircraft files through the Git system via FGAddon or
FGMembers.". This change has propagated to some of the translations.

- http://wiki.flightgear.org/FlightGear_N ... March_2015 -
Note in the section about the FGData split, that FGAddon is mentioned
as the very last note, conspicuously below the more prominent
FGMEMBERS.

- http://wiki.flightgear.org/Grumman_C-2_Greyhound - Compare the
current "It debuted with FlightGear 1.9.0 in December 2008 and is
currently available from helljah's site as well as FGMEMBERS." with
the old "It debuted with FlightGear 1.9.0 in December 2008.". Note
the changed meaning giving the impression that Emmanuel's aircraft is
no longer in FGAddon (though that might have been by accident). See
http://sourceforge.net/p/flightgear/fga ... raft/C-2A/
, this aircraft has been in FGData/FGAddon since the old FGData
repository days at Gitorious.

These efforts appear to be to either place FGData/FGAddon and
FGData+submodules/FGMEMBERS on the same footing, or to place FGMEMBERS
above the official infrastructure. This deliberately creates
confusion for FlightGear users as to what is "official"
infrastructure. The name FGData+submodules for the private fork of
FGData also adds to the confusion (
http://sourceforge.net/p/fgdata/submodu ... next/tree/ ). This
confusion appears to be significant and often surfaces on the
FlightGear forum.

I don't feel comfortable performing direct reversions of these minor
changes myself, at least without first discussing it. And some
articles are locked and cannot be changed. I was wondering what would
be the best steps to be taken to remove this deliberate confusion and
to clean up and restore the "officialness" of our core FlightGear
infrastructure on the official FlightGear wiki?

Cheers,

Edward

Erick Hofman wrote:On 09/13/2015 12:46 PM, Edward d'Auvergne wrote:

> I don't feel comfortable performing direct reversions of these minor
> changes myself, at least without first discussing it. And some
> articles are locked and cannot be changed. I was wondering what would
> be the best steps to be taken to remove this deliberate confusion and
> to clean up and restore the "officialness" of our core FlightGear
> infrastructure on the official FlightGear wiki?


FGMmembers is a private hangar just like any other private hangar and
therefore should not be promoted in official FlightGear documentation
including the wiki.

Thorsten Renk Thorsten wrote:> FGMmembers is a private hangar just like any other private hangar and
> therefore should not be promoted in official FlightGear documentation
> including the wiki.

+1

Alan Teeder wrote:There is a section, in the same wiki page, for 3rd party hangars.

Someone put the FGmembers links in the official section.

That is in keeping with how FGmembers is promoted as on the Forum

The man is a menace.

Ludovic Brenta Circum wrote:"Renk, Thorsten" <thorsten.i.renk@jyu.fi> writes:
>> FGMmembers is a private hangar just like any other private hangar and
>> therefore should not be promoted in official FlightGear documentation
>> including the wiki.
>
> +1
>
> * Thorsten

+1, and thanks to Thorsten for beating me to effecting the change.

Curtis Olson Curt wrote:Thanks all, FlightGear is built on the premise that everyone is working together in the best interest of the project, so it's sad to run into a situation where an individual is actively working to disrupt the project.

Stuart Buchanan Stuart wrote:
HI Guys,

We're also getting quite a lot of confusion, FUD and some aggravation
on the forum as well, which is leading to increased moderation load
and generally making the forum less useful.

Torsten D and I discussed the situation last night on the weekly
hangout. We think it would be a good idea to produce an official
"statement" regarding FGMEMBERS, as we did a while back when there was
confusion about companies selling FlightGear commercially under a
different name (http://www.flightgear.org/flightprosim.html). The
idea is that it would reflect the consensus of the core development
group, and include an FAQ to help answer questions users or aircraft
developers may have.

We can then point users to it, and link to it from the wiki or forum.
It might even be possible to create automatic links from the wiki or
forum to reduce the manual overhead.

I'll draft something and post it to the mailing list for comment,
hopefully tonight.

Best regards,

-Stuart

Thorsten Renk thorsten wrote:
> We can then point users to it, and link to it from the wiki or forum.
> It might even be possible to create automatic links from the wiki or
> forum to reduce the manual overhead.

I'm not sure that solves the problem.

As I see it, what is happening in the forum (in agreement with what happens on the wiki) always follows the same pattern:

* a user has a question

-> say 'how to install the FG devel version' or 'how to improve aircraft X'

* FGMEMBERS proponents immediately jump forward to recruit

-> and point users to using 'fgdata with submodules' (FGMEMBERS) because it'd be more convenient or get a note 'send your contribution to me and it'll go straight to FGMEMBERS' - what is not mentioned is that neither is the existence of the official infrastructure

* when pointing out that FGMEMBERS is neither endorsed nor supported by the official project, the usual philosophical discourse on freedom and prosecution results

-> and given that the readers of the thread don't actually see the big picture, any response in this thread appears just wildly out of place, because all the FGMEMBERS proponent has been seen doing is being friendly and helpful

Add to that that recently 'don't worry about legal stuff, if you believe this is GPL, that's good enough for me, it's only the other guys who are fear-mondering al the time' and the lack of any review process, and you see that an official statement linked somewhere is a hopelessly inadequate response. I'd be surprised if more than half of the people pointed to it even read it.

If you are a new contributor with, say, a nice 3d scenery model from different sources, not really experienced yet in how OpenSource development works - which guy would you go to - the one who says 'Oh great, I commited this immediately' or the guy who says 'Sorry, but we need to verify whether all sources are really GPL before we use this'. Especially if the first guy gives you the impression of contributing to FG just as well. We simply can't offer a seemingly 'better deal' to newcomers since we are bound by license issues and some quality control and do reviews for contributions.

Now, since trying to explain this to newcomers almost inevitably leads to 'dictatorship' discussions - what impressions will they get? At best that there's a lot of fighting in the project - so we get the usual peals to find a compromise. At worst just what Israel wants to spin, that he's a prosecuted freedom advocate.

I'm afraid, I don't see that such tactics can be countered by a statement. I see just two options:

* confine FGMEMBERS recruiting of developers to their own forum

* engage in disussion every time this happens and make it clear who represents the official position (very time consuming).

That's my two cents.

Ludovic Brenta Circum wrote:I do not consider myself a "core developer" even though I have commit
rights on FGAddon, since I have no admin rights anywhere on flightgear
but I'd like to express my support for whatever decision the admins
take; and maybe add a couple of ideas to the discussion.

Renk, Thorsten wrote:
>> We can then point users to it, and link to it from the wiki or
>> forum.
>> It might even be possible to create automatic links from the wiki or
>> forum to reduce the manual overhead.
>
> I'm not sure that solves the problem.

I agree but I think such a formal statement would go a long way to
explain and justify any decision that the admins take. Additionally,
this statement could also serve as a policy document for the forum.
The forum already has rules against personal abuse but it doesn't seem
to have rules against attempts to disrupt aircraft development. And
the rule #1 on the forum should become explicit: you use the forum
only by permission of the owners of the forum, and these owners have
every right to ban anyone they wish, with or without a warning or even
an explanation, at *their* (not your) discretion.

> As I see it, what is happening in the forum (in agreement with what
> happens on the wiki) always follows the same pattern:

[...]

> I'm afraid, I don't see that such tactics can be countered by a
> statement. I see just two options:
>
> * confine FGMEMBERS recruiting of developers to their own forum
>
> * engage in disussion every time this happens and make it clear who
> represents the official position (very time consuming).

I don't post on the forum but I occasionally read it and I can confirm
Thorten's depiction of the behavior of the proponents of FGMEMBERS.
Insofar as the forum is official infrastructure, provided and *paid
for* by core developers, I think that core developers have every right
to ban hostile or disruptive users from the forum, temporarily or
permanently. Maybe after a stern and formal warning? i.e. if they
should make any mention of FGMEMBERS on the offical forum at all?

I'm almost certain these people still read this mailing list, so they
won't be surprised at all if they are banned. In the mean time, it
is possible that this very discussion on the mailing list prompts them
to re-start their usual disruptive rants about being victims of "the
establishment", causing massive workload for the moderators of the
forum. If this should happen, I encourage the forum moderators to
ban these users temporarily while the core developers decide what to
do.