Establishing a formal community

[tombh]

@alienjeff: I acknowledge and very much appreciate your feelings of frustration and disappointment, however the way in which you express them is provocative and unconstructive. May I ask that you try and express yourself in a manner that is more conducive to constructive dialogue and on a thread that is more on topic.
Sorry to be a bore,
tom

[alienjeff]

@alienjeff: I acknowledge and very much appreciate your feelings of frustration and disappointment, however the way in which you express them is provocative and unconstructive.

If you're referring to my most recent directed at ttuuxxx in re: 3.xxCE, it was an honest question. The parenthetical jab was strictly in jest, ffs.

May I ask that you try and express yourself in a manner that is more conducive to constructive dialogue and on a thread that is more on topic.

You just did.

Sorry to be a bore

Apology accepted.

On a related matter, I received an email from Otro Pogo this afternoon, which I'll share:

Update of previous post of today:


Hi Jeff,

This morning, when I tried to access www.murga-linux.com , I received the message "critical error - you have been banned from this forum". This happens before I try to log in, and prevents me from accessing the forum from any of my home systems. So I'm unable to even see what's happened to my recent posts. or what commentary may have been posted about them or me subsequently.

Have attached a screensave and copies of the last page of posts I was able to access, including, presumably, the post(s) that precipitated this ban.


NB: I did not receive any prior warning of this ban, nor have I received any e-mail notice or explanation of it since at either of the e-mail addresses registered with my username.



regards,

otropogo


[PS: You're welcome to pass on the message above and/or the attachments appended to the previous one to anyone else and and/or to to any forum you consider appropriate.]

Has Otro Pogo been surreptitiously banished as Gn2 was?

[Caneri]

Hi AJ,

This explains otropogo,

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 048#239048

Eric

[alienjeff]

Yeah, just found that, Eric, but thanks.

Looks like Flash still doesn't like it when people stand up to him.

[pigshed]

At risk of rocking the boat... but hopefully acting as ballast.

From what I see so far, there is much to discuss where everyone has different ideas and preferences. In the interest of moving forward I second lobster as chair person for the meeting. He's keen and willing to arrange the meeting and chair it - so why not. (Otherwise we'll need to arrange a meeting to decide who's going to chair the meeting....) Acting as chairperson for the meeting is not standing on anyones toes, it's merely showing the initiative and willing to enable you all to discuss things more efficiently, hopefully finding some basic points of agreement and some direction.

Lets be clear here, Lobsters not offering to be chairman of the board or making any power claims - he's just offering to organize and chair a meeting to discuss things in a more productive and quicker way than posting here in the forum.

Arguably I have no right to act as second as I'm certainly no back bone of the community - but if it we're really going to need to discuss who chairs a meeting then I'm afraid we're doomed and will need to set up the "Un-cooperative".

As for secretary, Rachel Stevens was looking good earlier, but I believe she's unavailable. I'd offer myself but have no experience with any web work, so unless it's as easy as typfing thus h-ere I'm no use. Either way, finding a secretary is more of a convenience and is no reason to hold back.

Cheers.

[ttuuxxx]

@ttuuxxx

So when are you and Tronkel going to finish what you've already started with the 3.xxCE (chihuahua enema)? Or did I somehow miss the Grand Announcement and Unveiling?

I would like to answer your question with a bunch of fffffff's but I won't, I have told you in the past that my position with 3.2 was basically supply tronkel with packages, That I did and I'm done my part, his part was to build it, which he has tons of times, The final will happen when tronkel has time, I bet you were one of those kids that always said in a back seat of a car "Are we there yet Dad?" like 2 miutes outside of the driveway on a long trip. Anyways stop being a troll.
ttuuxxx

[Lobster]

Arguably I have no right to act as second as I'm certainly no back bone of the community - but if it we're really going to need to discuss who chairs a meeting then I'm afraid we're doomed and will need to set up the "Un-cooperative".

When we get to the second issue on the agenda. I will be proposing other people as next chair. A chairperson is just a facilitator. A good idea is to move that around. This is not even a formal meeting - so I am happy to chair.


As for secretary, Rachel Stevens was lo ... hold back.

Seconded. A secretary is someone who records the meeting. So it is a question of adding the important info to the community site as a record of what is decided. Do the best you can. I will assist if I can and as a wiki page others are welcome to improve too . . .

What I suggest is a link from here:
http://www.puppylinux.org/wiki/archives ... ep-thought

entitled meeting 1
Here it is . . .
http://www.puppylinux.org/wiki/archives ... t-meetings

[raffy]

Hmm, the topic here is about formal organization for the Puppy Linux community. If some members insert a discussion of this topic in the "meeting" called by Lobster, please leave some notes (or a URL) here. Thanks!

[Aitch]

Personally, I find it requires deep thought just not to fall over all the 'we nearly got going, here' threads, before going off on another tangent

I've commented in the various forum/new forum threads & retirement & repo ones too, even done one myself, scuppered as I recall, and there I was happily joining tombh and..........swerve .......Puppy 5 er 4.3 no 4.2 [whatever happened to series 3.2/.3/4 etc ?] Is there a conclusion to which distro puppy may link to, slack, or a debian/buntu mix, Gentoo or flavour of the month?

I thought we were still sounding out co-op community er teamwork, & whether we could - here on this forum

Now we are called to a meeting with Lobster, who has already published an agenda [uncirculated] which is seconded before even a dozen people have responded

Can I ask - Just what is so urgent about this???
Can we not go one step at a time?
Time is not an enemy, and nothing will collapse if we take things easily, until people feel comfortable

These are quite major shifts in collective consciousness being ushered in

........like a gentle breeze would be enjoyable - yes?

Thank you for listening

tombh, I'm still following your posts, and related comments, with interest

Aitch

[Aitch]

May I suggest for all those with loads of energy and not a lot of patience to allow a fair proportion of people to read and absorb.....

A PLAN >>>>>>>>

PROPOSED GOAL ?????????

PROPOSED STEPS REQUIRED to get there >>>>>

COMMENTS & FEEDBACK TAKEN NOW including expected percentage response - out of how many active members?

if you must - deadline by which answers must be in

or something similar

I think WhoDo did one once which I read/understood?

where did that go?

sorry for shouting

has anyone done an active memberlist?

it would be a start IMHO

Aitch

[tombh]

@pigshed: Not that I want to discourage your comments (which are clearly thoughtful and so very welcome), but I'd like to try and keep this thread as separate as possible from other threads. I would like this thread to be solely for the discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of formally working together as a community. I know that things have been difficult so far for Puppy and it's tempting to just think "come on guys let's just get on with something", but here on this thread, it will be just as much a success if 'nothing' gets resolved. This is a place where we can just talk without any urgency to solve or achieve anything. This isn't an official meeting.

So may I ask what you think about the difference between; working together formally, therefore with rules that each member signs up to and must follow if they are to remain members, and working informally together, without any clear community consensus/values/direction where anyone can do whatever they want whenever they want? There's clearly advantages and drawbacks to both sides, at the moment it seems we are more heading towards the latter, informal approach, because it's just so much easier to get things done this way! Which is fine However, personally I am very weary of this approach, as it will be hard to coordinate any real direction and raise any measure of resources towards the formidable challenge of creating a piece of software that controls something as complex as a modern computer.

@ttuuuxx: I appreciate how difficult it can be to receive criticism, but your response is utterly inappropriate and fails to demonstrate any desire to arrive at a common understanding. What ever alienjeff feels or says he does not deserve to be humiliated, I know you didn't mean it literally but, he is not a troll.

Please could you try and stay on topic; do you not have any answers to the the questions I posed to you in my last post?

@Lobster: Please don't take this the wrong way, but could you try and stay on topic also. I'm not trying to implement the Coop structure with this thread, but more trying to provide on opportunity to discuss the facts, however obvious and self evident, about working together as a community. What are your own thoughts about the benefits/drawbacks of formality/informality in the community? Of course I get the impression that you lean more towards informality, but do you have any opinions/reasoning that underpins that preference? Does Barry's lack of interest in these issues make formality seem less feasible?

@Aitch:

I thought we were still sounding out co-op community er teamwork, & whether we could - here on this forum

Thank you
Could you just clarify your previous post a bit though, I'm not quite sure what you were suggesting by

to allow a fair proportion of people to read and absorb..... .

@BarryK: I know that you haven't had much to do with any of the discussions about the future of Puppy here on the forum, but I would just like to appeal to you to try and give it a bit more attention. By this I am absolutely not suggesting that you should try and take more of a leader role and 'hold our hands' into Puppy's new life. Rather what I am suggesting is a re-evaluation of the social role of community in the technical creation of an operating system. And therefore a little more transparency regarding your feelings towards community and specifically the Puppy Community.

Of course Puppy would simply not exist if it hadn't have been for you, but equally Puppy would, without question, not be what it is today without the community that have so keenly offered feedback, testing, development, enthusiasm and support. The community is not just a bonus, it is as integral to the operating system as the kernel. Therefore, is it not logical to give it as much attention as the kernel? You can never compile and patch the perfect kernel, nor can you ever participate in a perfect community, but neither is good enough reason not to try your best.

Participation in a community is not about saintly altruism, about offering the correct answer every time, about always liking everyone, it is rather about one's sincere intention towards these things. If you feel that communities are just not your thing, then that's not a failure, however, neglecting to express this can cause all kinds of misinterpreted signals and ambiguities. If it hasn't been expressed publicly, then has it been expressed privately? And to whom? Are we valued? Are our efforts appreciated? Are our concerns and advice welcomed? Have we done something wrong? Of course these are purely hypothetical questions, but they are the potential 'bugs' of community life.

As I say, I'm not suggesting that you provide the answers we want to hear, but rather acknowledge and demonstrate the significance of attending to them. I for one, and I know I speak for a lot of people, sincerely wish you the best, in whatever you do, and thank you deeply for your down-to-earth approach to computing. And I'm pretty sure that you feel the same about us. So, in the same way that you have asked and benefited from the feedback we have given you over the years, we are asking for some feedback from you over our efforts to create a working Puppy community. Of course, it doesn't have to be un-reflective, "yes, your doing great", it can simply be, "I'm as uncertain as you guys! I'm sorry I can't be more help but I'm impressed by your efforts, keep it up, I'll help where I can."

Thanks,
tom

[tronkel]

tombh wrote:

Which is fine However, personally I am very weary of this approach, as it will be hard to coordinate any real direction and raise any measure of resources towards the formidable challenge of creating a piece of software that controls something as complex as a modern computer.

The modern computer bit is the important part here. Making an OS to run such computers is a formidable task that for example Microsoft, with all its various resources departments and financial clout, has simply been unable to successfully complete. Just look at the Vista mess.

There is therefore no reason why Puppy would have any more success with this approach than Microsoft has had. Realistically, the Puppy project doesn't even have all the required skills available to it within the Communuty as far as I can see. Let's not over-estimate our abilities here. There is no reason to think that project tasks divided between various, as yet unknown contributors, could result in a successfully implemented full base version of Puppy.

I have made this point in various previous forum messages. Puppy has always been successfully implemented by Barry, who has made every major contribution as well as every major decision. No "committee" was ever involved. A Mr Puppy needs to be found who can realistically replace Barry, whithout whom Puppy will simply split up into various camps and eventually peter out. Democracy will not help prevent this!

[Aitch]

tombh

I know that things have been difficult so far for Puppy and it's tempting to just think "come on guys let's just get on with something", but here on this thread, it will be just as much a success if 'nothing' gets resolved. This is a place where we can just talk without any urgency to solve or achieve anything. This isn't an official meeting.

exactly my feeling about what you were about - thank you for clarifying

Could you just clarify your previous post a bit though, I'm not quite sure what you were suggesting by

to allow a fair proportion of people to read and absorb..... .

MM yes, well this sort of follows on from a few of the ideas/meeting points arrived at so far
What I often refer people to, is those autopilot moments, when you are so #in your own zone#, maybe sorting your own difficulties with hardware/thread communication, or some unrelated outside issue, that you haven't searched for new 'input' & even found this thread, let alone gone back to check some previous links you got reminded of, and got 'with the flow'
- and all this could be happening as you drive down the road, [as we all have the ability to solve things while doing other things - our autopilot] and yet you can come home, turn the computer on and be 'in a community' & trying to find out if we are 'all present, at the same time, focussed on the same thing, and making progress, ultimately to an 'understanding' or as I prefer an overstanding, when you tower over 'the problem', realizing that it wasn't that big of a deal.....

Make sense?

I like the 'appeal to Barry' and second that emotion

If Barry could just figure out how to compile a community, everything would be sweet

Seriously though, if anyone knows of a way to work out how many are actively in this community of ours, we could get an idea of percentages for decisions that a majority are happy with, or not

maybe this will prove to be a wrong direction, and an alternate will surface, my 'key' is, 'where is the ENERGY?'

Back to you, tombh

added, having read tronkel's post [while I was typing]

bit disappointing, sorry to say, as energy can be towards success or failure - a good community should be focused on success, IMHO

Aitch

[tronkel]

aitch wrote:

bit disappointing, sorry to say, as energy can be towards success or failure - a good community should be focused on success, IMHO

Problem is Aitch, you could have the best community in the world -complete with all of its no doubt laudable ideals, but at the end of the day this does not necessarily mean that it could produce the best software in the world. The "good" community, complete with its energy quota is not an end in itself here. The "good" software (OS in this case) though, is the end goal.

[Lobster]

What are your own thoughts about the benefits/drawbacks of formality/informality in the community?

I am interested in new versions of Puppy with minimum need to create a self perpetuating structure. That is why I am on topic.
Show the 'benevolent dictatorship' working - it did. Show the co-op working by using it. That opportunity exists with the 4.2 meeting.

The informal community exists and works.
http://www.puppylinux.org/wiki/archives ... -community
It is largely a co-operative effort

More developers, more cooperation, less management.

The "good" software (OS in this case) though, is the end goal.

Exactly - the goal dictates the nature of the community

[ttuuxxx]

Well Tom
Co-ops are great for farmers, Lending institutions, Funerals, Housing, But they all have one thing in common they tend to be people oriented. Not really dry cut, somewhat like, you can feel at ease to be around them and most are money related, Well the ones that I've seen.
I have seriously put a lot of effort into anything I do for puppy related projects. Same with many others in the same boat. I'm not sure if a co-op would fill a void of governing council for such a project.
Really my last proposal about Splitting the puppy series up and seeing if there are any takers, was a pretty good and easy way to move forward with what we have already, while others can plan and learn things that might not be strong points like compiling a kernel, even Barry made a nice post how to re-compile a kernel. Plus others are attempting to compile them also. So we aren't really that stuck.
All we need is Barry's permission to allow users to take over a series and make it as an Official Release, I did offer for series 3 and have others help because people are emailing me to do so. I've been thinking about all the effort I would have to put into it, probably the same as I usually do in all the puppy related stuff I don now. It would just be moving from one focus to another.

Say if I built a new series 3.0 repo, packaged up like 200+ pets, maybe more or less. Built a wizbang version of puppy, like I suggested around 120MB due to the Slackware additions then the Coop says, Now were going to let somebody else take over series 3.
Let me tell you, I don't think that would be right, I think if someone who takes over a series, that they should keep it until they get tired of it and want to move on and then return it back to the community just like what Barry has done or is doing, Anybody actually have any directions from him?.

Last I read Barry wants to keep just about everything puppy related in his name other than releasing newer versions, So really shouldn't we be more focussed on what and who will be doing the next versions?

And Tom yes "alienjeff" is a troll, He is the puppy linux forum self dedicated troll, A troll by definition is
troll
(v.) (1) To deliberately post derogatory or inflammatory comments to a community forum, chat room, newsgroup and/or a blog in order to bait other users into responding.
Like we all haven't seen him do that. Come on.
Plus whats up with all the "stay on topic" I find your really pushy/bossy and kind of a control freak, if you ask me when it comes to a thread.

I say scrap the coop, dish-out the releases, Barry give us some insight and lets get the puppy machine moving forward.

ttuuxxx

[tronkel]

Lobster wrote:

The informal community exists and works.
http://www.puppylinux.org/wiki/archives ... -community
It is largely a co-operative effort

This is certainly true as far as it goes, (community editions, derivatives have always been a community success story), but has the Community ever produced a Puppy base version?

More developers, more cooperation, less management.

Lobster, how do you equate more developers, more co-operation with less management? Do more developers not mean rather more management?

[ttuuxxx]

What are your own thoughts about the benefits/drawbacks of formality/informality in the community?

I am interested in new versions of Puppy with minimum need to create a self perpetuating structure. That is why I am on topic.
Show the 'benevolent dictatorship' working - it did. Show the co-op working by using it. That opportunity exists with the 4.2 meeting.

The informal community exists and works.
http://www.puppylinux.org/wiki/archives ... -community
It is largely a co-operative effort

More developers, more cooperation, less management.

The "good" software (OS in this case) though, is the end goal.

Exactly - the goal dictates the nature of the community

Lobster I have to agree with you, we have the community in place, we just need to get the ball rolling, To do that we would need Barry's ok. If he says ok to me taking over series 3.0, I'll start this weekend, I have a few loose ends "Firepup" next release to finish. I'm getting a lot of good input from it.
ttuuxxx

[Aitch]

tronkel
quickie, I hope -
not meaning to labour a point, but OS development and Community development have different focuses, despite Lobster's afterpost

We do have several energy streams running concurrently, yet do not have to see them as 'competing streams' as there is plenty of energy here, as illustrated by AJ, & felt by many....

Can we maintain a common theme, per thread, perchance?,

....there are plenty to choose from

just sidetracking draws energy away from focus - whichever you choose to post in [I know, hands up, I am as guilty as any...... ]

you have much to offer, tronkel, please be content as a valued & respected OS teamplayer

ttuuxxx's post, while I was typing, illustrates that energy

heaven knows, it would be hard to deny that I throw a fair amount of energy at these boards, yet can't code for toffee, & I don't want to be 'left out of the loop', ok? so community development appeals to me and I'll do what I can

Aitch

[Pizzasgood]

Say if I built a new series 3.0 repo, packaged up like 200+ pets, maybe more or less. Built a wizbang version of puppy, like I suggested around 120MB due to the Slackware additions then the Coop says, Now were going to let somebody else take over series 3.
Let me tell you, I don't think that would be right, I think if someone who takes over a series, that they should keep it until they get tired of it and want to move on and then return it back to the community just like what Barry has done or is doing, Anybody actually have any directions from him?.

See, the thing is, you wouldn't have been in charge of it to begin with, at least not with how I envision things. The way I see things, there would be a team working on it. If you wanted to stay on the team for the next forty years, you could. So long as you didn't do something dumb and get impeached, which I doubt you'd do (by dumb I mean stuff like sabotage or blatantly ignoring the community).

You'd still have to work within guidelines decided by the community, but it's not like you'd have to be shunted to a new project every couple months or anything.

Within the team, there would probably be a person who is more in-charge than the others, but that wouldn't entail a whole lot. Mainly just to provide a final say on small decisions (largish things would need an outside-the-team vote, to involve the rest of the community).

And when I've been saying "team", I refer to one of several, as I described a page or two ago.



And once more, I will reiterate: We will need to use some sort of svn-like system. That keeps any one person from needing to shoulder so much of the burden, and prevents most of the other issues with having a single person who puts it all together (control-freaks, sudden hospitalization, etc.). It also makes things very transparent. Anybody can look at the SVN repo and see exactly what changes have been made between any and all files, between any and all versions of Puppy. Including all the "nightly" changes between versions.

It is much more COMMUNITY friendly.

Plus whats up with all the "stay on topic" I find your really pushy/bossy and kind of a control freak, if you ask me when it comes to a thread.

*the waffle iron chuckles over the pot's comments to the kettle*

(translation: Aren't we all control freaks? I don't know so much about Tombh, but I know you and I are.)

So may I ask what you think about the difference between; working together formally, therefore with rules that each member signs up to and must follow if they are to remain members, and working informally together, without any clear community consensus/values/direction where anyone can do whatever they want whenever they want?

My thinking is a loose but defined structure down to the resolution of teams. Within a team, things would be more loose and informal. That's the area most people would be working in anyways. The rigidity above the team level helps hold everything together and take care of the larger decision making. But most little decisions could be made by group consensus within the team in charge of that area. If the community in general dislikes a little decision, they can contest it. But for the most part, they only care about the larger things, that are visible to them, or the things that overlap with their area. In overlap cases, two teams would want to communicate with eachother informally in most cases. If they can't agree, then get more formal.

What I'm getting at is lots of informal communication and cooperativeness. There would be structure for when it's needed (large decisions, access control for the package repo, website, svn (write access; must be world-readable), etc.). But for the most part people just do what they need to do. Things like changing the browser need discussion, but an overall vote isn't necessarily needed for something little, like improving the xorg wizard (so long as it isn't a major change). Just do it. If a bug fix for Geany comes out, pop it in. If somebody thinks that the bug fix broke something else, they say, "hey, hold up a second" and we discuss it to see which bug is worse. But the majority of the time, that wouldn't be necessary, so assume that it will not be rather than assume that it will be.