WARNING LEVEL High. FGMEMBERS under official Attack!

[jwocky]

Torpedo hit already. "Someone" who usually stays out of it, pmed me I was too hard. I explained what this manifesto proves. He asked me to discuss it in the open in the forum, I asked why. As it is, I can post a recipe for some dish and I would get hate for it. So it is time, for those who like "to stay out of it" to grow a pair of balls and speak up on their own or lose all because we got our beatings while they all stood around watching the show and are tired now. So, a lot of pms are going around, I rarely saw so many users on at this time. Maybe, it is time, the silent majority speaks up. If not ... well for whom do we fight then?

[IAHM-COL]

I am guessing I know who PM you; and I think I saw the "torpedo" Hit

I think the points you raise are totally valid, but I am definitely expecting an over-reaction on their side

At this point we don't directly care too much because thanks to your great work we have this forum! All I am afraid is that they will play the hurt lady and cry!

[IAHM-COL]

Develop your aircraft directly in FGAddon? It has been mentioned
several times already that FGAddon is not for "finished" aircraft
but supports their day-to-day development as well. "Finished"
aircraft go into the release branches, which exist for this very
purpose.

[IAHM-COL]

+1

[IAHM-COL]

It's also my preference.

Erik

[IAHM-COL]

suggested minor spelling and grammar fixes inline...


On 09/15/2015 04:47 AM, Stuart Buchanan wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> As promised, below please find a draft statement on FGMEMBERS. The
> aim is to post this on the FlightGear website, and use it as a
> reference when questions come up about FGMEMBERS from users, and also
> as a refutation of some of the claims from FGMEMBERS proponents.
>
> I'd appreciate any and all comments. In particular, I suspect there
> are other FAQ entries I haven't thought of - particularly questions
> from confused users.
>
> -Stuart
>
> =Preface=
>
> There has been a lot of confusion and FUD caused by the FGMEMBERS
> repository. The core FlightGear team feel that it is important to
> make clear statement of their position on the matter, and also provide
> an FAQ.

s/an FAQ/a FAQ/

>
> =Background=
>
> FGMEMBERS resulted from a fundamental disagreement of a couple of
> individuals with the consensus of the core FlightGear team over an
> infrastructure change and split of the FGData repository. That
> consensus had built up over a number of years of discussion on the
> mailing list.
>
> As a results FGMEMBERS forked the FGAddon repository. FGAddon is the

s/results/result/

> official aircraft repository for the FlightGear project, and the
> source of the aircaft that are available on the FlightGear website.
>
> Subsequently, FGMEMBERS proponents have continually made very emotive
> statements and accusations regarding the core development team and the
> way the project is run. The core FlightGear team consider those
> baseless and has refuted them.
>
> =Official FlightGear Position=
>
> The core FlightGear team considers the FGMEMBERS fork to be bad for
> the project for a number of reasons and encourages users and aircraft
> developers to use the official FGAddon respository instead.

s/respository/repository/

>
> 1) Historically, forks of Open Source projects are unsustainable as

s/unsustainable as/unsustainable because/

> developers choose one or the other. Over time, the vast majority of
> forks die. In a small minority of cases they become prevalent and the
> original dies. In either case, a huge amount of effort is wasted on
> the fork that eventually loses. We feel that effort is better spent
> on improving the simulator.
>
> 2) It is inevitable that the fork will diverge, as changes are made to
> one repository but not the other. Attempting to keep the repositories
> in sync requires huge amounts of effort and is likely to fail due to
> incompatible changes being made to the same file.

s/to the same file/to the same file by multiple developers/
s/flightgear/FlightGear/

> community, and was a decision made over the course of a number of
> years with much discussion. We are not prepared to re-open that
> discussion, nor change a decision simply because a a very small vocal
> minority do not agree with that consensus.


--
NOTE: No off-list assistance is given without prior approval.
*Please keep mailing list traffic on the list* unless
private contact is specifically requested and granted.

[IAHM-COL]

> Develop your aircraft directly in FGAddon? It has been mentioned
> several times already that FGAddon is not for "finished" aircraft
+1

There is a fundamental problem with any other repository that mirrors
FGAddon on an regular basis[4]

Given that it is accepted[1] that developers will commit unfinished (or
part finished) to FGAddon between freezes on the tacit understanding
that it all turns out right before the next release (and equally
implicit in this is that any changeset that is broken at release time
may well get reverted anyway)

So any other mirroring repository will at some point have unreleased
changes, some of which may break or fail to run on the currently
released FG due to these changes[2].

The well established release mechanism via the web page and directly
within FlightGear will resolve most of the gripes and problems with
downloading aircraft.

I think most of us agree that using any sort of repo as a delivery
mechanism for end users is possibly one of the worst things to do for
the average end user.

A version control system is generally essential to developers and
release coordinators and IMHO not really for the average end user[3][4].

--Richard
----------------
[1] At least this is my understanding of how FGAddon should work
[2] The F-15 that is in FGAddon at the moment will not work with 3.4
because missing shaders cause a segfault when canvas is also used in the
aircraft.
[3] Unless the end user wishes to use a repo and has the ability to do so.
[4] Equally inclusion of any development repositories inside of a user
facing repository is a versioning problem waiting to happen.

[IAHM-COL]

Hi Gary,

If the FGMEMBERS statement is insufficient (though clearly
beneficial), would you have any other ideas or suggestions for
counteracting the FGMEMBERS threat?

Regards,

Edward



I would ban the FGMEMBERS creator from the this list, the wiki, the forum, and any other site administered by the core Flightgear staff. I would have done this some six months ago. I don't say this lightly. I have managed professional forums in the education community and have had to make difficult but necessary decisions. Even without accounting for other intentions, the extreme and repeated discourtesy shown to others by Mr. Israel Hernandez/IAHM-COL would have justified a ban.

The official statement as currently written effectively ends with "We consider this unacceptable." If I were a third party reading this, I'd be thinking: "OK, so what is the project doing to address this?" Curt is right: the project hasn't seen a problem of this kind and intensity before. In the past, problems tend to go away given time, merge constructively, or self-correct. This one hasn't.

What is the project willing to do to defend itself from a hostile individual or a potentially disastrous division? The project administrators do not wish to be seen as "the bad guys", which is commendable. But there are limits beyond which excessive tolerance becomes unhealthy for the community. This is not about evolution, where a great and perhaps difficult change leads to improvement. This is about a very smart, very clever, very energetic, and very unscrupulous individual. This person already dominates the forums. He is attempting to establish his site as the principle Flightgear repository and working-space. He hoards the work of others. He makes open, personal attacks on the core developers. His writings have equated the situation to a struggle between workers and the ruling class. He welcomes the conflict and feeds on it. He now has followers, some nearly as vehement as he is. He has stated that he will not compromise. Thorsten and others have demonstrated that logic, reason and appeals have no effect. An open-source project of this kind has only a few measures it can use in response. Is the project collectively willing to take those measures? Under what circumstances will it do so?

-Gary, aka "Buckaroo" on the forums

[jwocky]

Well, Free Speech and civilized behaviour are never the strong treats of dictators and their friends.

[jwocky]

Just to prevent the "Josef Goebbels/StuartC disease on the "official" forum):

More or less publicity. Of course, only open source projects can become SourceForge project of the months and our "rulers" have decided to show to the world FG is none of those anymore by publishing a manifest that makes clear, they rule on the website (look up the Richard Stallmann definition). And now we read on the dev-list, Buckaroo promotes banning from the whole infrastructure as a measure agaisnt political inconvenient opposition. One coudl say, in FG now the dictators of the old are well and alive.
And don't bother to delete this, I copy it anyway over to the Free Speech forum, so your attempts to silence opposition are as usual too late.