[sldev] Just askin': How are we doing?

[Nicholaz Beresford]

Hi All!

> This raises a few questions for me. Firstly, from where you stand,
> *are* we doing better overall?

Yes, I think it going a lot better.  Stuff is taken out of the
Patch Sematary (that's what the "Issues with patches attached" query
looked like when I started) and eventually into the viewer.



> Second, is there anything we're doing *worse*? Any recent changes you
> *don't* like?

None that I could think of.



> Lastly, what can we still do better? Are there one or two things that
> frustrate you the most, which we could make part of our third quarter
> goals?

There are a couple of things, although I'm beyond the "frustration"
phase.

One small thing on my wishlist would be on JIRA being able to watch
topics and get email notifications on changes.

A thing regarding the open source and development would be better
communication.  Things are probably looking a lot different from
inside LL, but from the outside LL looks like a huge black box
with an occasional blip on the radar.

The other (big) thing, and I think the comments on the blog for
the 1.17.1 and 1.18 release announcements support that, would be to
make the 3rd quarter the quarter of "bug fixing".  This is probably
something King Philip would need to do (like Bill Gates at one point
just announced the "year of security" or something like that), but
a quarter of letting the dust settle, where everybody would just
work on fixing and cleaning up stuff, would do the whole viewer a
lot of good.



> I've been looking at other open source projects for a while, looking
> for other ideas we can adopt. Nicholaz Beresford suggested watching
> the wine lists, which I've done, as well as looking in on a couple of
> the Linux distributions. I'm trying to identify the things we do
> differently, where they might have the better answer. I've got a small
> list I'm ready to discuss, including a couple of the long-standing
> pain points, but I want to get your input before pushing my own ideas.

I have not done anything myself with Wine, but my partner here in my
business is using Linux and is checking our software against Wine
occasionally.  From what I've heard and watched, this project really
sets an example.  They have clear procedures, fast turnaround times
(which is easier, because they have a real time open source repository),
and excellent communication.

One point which is really important for me is communication.  I don't
mind if a patch is rejected for good reasons, but with them you usually
seem to get a response on a patch submit within 24 hours.  For example
most of my early patches for SL weren't exactly the way that helped
easy integration because I didn't understand the procedures and I would
not have minded redoing them with a hint about how to do so (the wiki
for "submitting code" didn't exist then).

Speaking of Wine, we recently submitted one and had it go life in 10
hours.  The key seems there that the guy (or guys) who apply the
atches, have authority to do so and also the knowledge to judge
what's good and what not.



Nick