Establishing a formal community

[cb88]

yep.... the metal relief was so great i had to come back for more...

posting this from slitaz... which is hitting the nail on the head for me ... the even have lowram install disks for as low as 16mb or was it 8 i assume that is console only and yes it is fun as it should be just as puppy was for me untlill it had to go and become a formal project

from what i can tell slitaz is a formal project.... but it seems the internals are simpler similar to unipup?

in any case i said count me out of development and that i would still be around as you see here

[tombh]

@Aitch:

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.....

Yeah it's hard isn't! trying to figure out 'where it's at'. You just have to keep an eye on the recent forum post titles and try and keep up to date, it can take a fair bit of time.

so community development appeals to me and I'll do what I can

That's good to hear, as you can see from my sentiments in the 'appeal to Barry', I greatly value the role of community and think that community developer could be as significant a role as technical developer.

@tronkel: I'm inclined to agree with you, that without someone like Barry, we just won't be able to climb the huge mountain that is the modern operating system. But. Here is the million dollar question; what exactly does Barry mean by? --

It is likely that I will keep working on some aspects of the "core" or "base" Puppy, primarily for my puplet but that will be useful for the mainstream Puppy.

Oh dear, I'm about to go into rant mode!

What is the 'likely' bit dependant on? Would he be swayed by a formal community or an informal community? Would he be prepared to meet the criteria we set for members to be able to access our SVN? Or more likely do we just follow his lead as we've always done before. We can't rule him completely out of the picture can we? But then at the same time, it's hard to really feel that he's interested in 'our' Puppy. The strange thing is that if we, in our hypothetical member-based community, had a developer that didn't seem that interested in the project, then one would wonder whether he/she should be considered a member.

If we end up just following UniPup instead of the old Puppy then what's changed? Not much. Barry's still basically leader, because no-one can really replace him, and who'd want to if he's maintaining a working ISO? Okay, so the boot scripts will be subtly different, it will be geared towards set hardware and the release cycle will be slower. So Barry either retires or he doesn't. He can't do both! I think he just needs to be honest. I think he just wants to get on with his own project at his own pace, which he's quite entitled to. But it does seem like he's getting his cake and eating it. Therefore, going through the motions of helping the community, but without actually getting involved. As I say, that's totally fine if he doesn't want to have anything to do with the community (it's quite understandable!), but leaving us guessing and squabbling as we humbly bow to his pace can only go on so long before some of us begin to ask questions.

Okay, rant over. Sorry to talk about you like that Barry

@ttuuuxx: Thanks for your comments. It's great to hear your thoughts. I never expected everyone to agree with me. Hearing the other side of the argument helps me (and everyone else) see things from a bit more of a broader perspective. And so not got so lost in single-track ways of thinking.

@Pizzasgood: This idea of teams is an interesting one, certainly the kind of thing we could implement with the Secondary rules. Yeah, and allowing people just to change minor details without any bureaucracy is a must. Perhaps there should be a mechanism whereby, if there is any controversy/disagreement in a change someone makes then we can hold a vote to ratify that change? Like you say, "if they can't agree then get formal".

@pigshed: No worries. Please don't let fear of veering off-topic stop you from posting though! About the VOIP/IRC thing, I'm a big fan of VOIP, it is so much easier to communicate and gauge someone's feelings by hearing their voice. I'm remember the first time I did it with Eric (Caneri), I was so nervous, but after a while the familiarity of voice (as opposed to reading someone's text) makes one fel a lot more at ease. I have been part of some VOIP conferences here on Puppy with varying degrees of success. However, the idea of using it as a means to conduct formal meetings might be quite difficult. Skype definitely has the best call quality for conferencing but can only be used by broadband users. Gizmo can be used on dial-up but the conferencing facility is almost unusable beyond 3 people. Not to mention the problem of a 24 hour planet! So I certainly think there is a place for it and would very much encourage those working closely together to use it as much as they can.

This is actually something I discussed at the CDA meeting I mentioned in the opening post of this thread. Basically a Primary rule is that meetings must be advertised to all members in advance and specified to occur on a fixed date for a given length of time. This is simply to ensure that all members are offered the opportunity to take part in discussions and decisions equally and fairly without discrimination. So what they said is that there would be no problem with holding a meeting for 24 hours and for votes to be cast electronically on that date. A forum/IRC/VOIP could be used in the days/weeks beforehand to thrash out the issues and the actual decision making process can occur on the set date.

So it's possible, but how it would actually work out in reality is another question!

[Aitch]

@tombh
re your last comment, maybe HairyWill would be willing to be communications co-ordinator?,
as he did most work, I think, on pjsip
I had computer crashing at the end of that phase, so sort of missed out on the conference attempt - how was it/many attended?
maybe a poll/headcount of working pjsip users?
I had 2 successes [Jay & Irihapeti] and 3 failures tombh, Lobster, & Eric - one way only - from a win2k box/none from puppy2.14
I like pizzasgood's ideas/tombh's 'management' - directed @ posts

Aitch

[raffy]

A formal organization for Puppy Linux is needed - that is beyond doubt. An entity has to represent the knowledge base unique to the distro and act as formal channel of communication between the developers and the public.

The first step in the formal process is drafting of the articles of incorporation and the by-laws. But for now the question is, should it be a coop or another form of organization?

Tombh: So Barry either retires or he doesn't. He can't do both! I think he just needs to be honest. I think he just wants to get on with his own project at his own pace, which he's quite entitled to.

This observation is accurate, and by not being committed to a formal community, Barry essentially reserves for himself "veto power", for example, if what he sees forming is outside his expectations.

We already know one foremost rule of the Puppy Linux community, that one's stature is based on merit (this can be used as criterion for membership in the formal organization). Perhaps we can ask Barry for some other rule/s that he wants the organization to follow.

[Pizzasgood]

Looks like Barry's busy studying up on all the stuff we've been ranting and raving about for the last couple months.

I feel sorry for the poor guy.


Re: voip: I've never used any voip before. Do they have some kind of indicator to tell you who it is that's speaking? Obviously it can't say which voice is which, but maybe turn on a light next to a name when that person speaks?

I ask because otherwise it might be hard to keep track of who is saying what, by voice alone. The wide geographic distribution we have would help (many different dialects) but some kind of built-in identification would still be nice.


I think we'll have to use a mix of real-time stuff (e.g. IRC and VoIP) and forum threads, depending on what will be discussed. The forum is nice because you have time to pull your thoughts together, write them, reshape them, and otherwise craft something worth posting. But it's so much slower than real-time. And certain things are much much simpler in real-time. Such as figuring out which aspects of a train of logic a person has issues with. You can go step by step and get immediate feedback.


Also, for "official" meetings, somebody will need to record the meeting so that it can be transcribed. Maybe also save and post the recording itself, because listening to it could convey much more meaning and depth than the words. Like the strength of an opinion, or how serious a suggestion was. And you can listen to the recording while you do something else (exercise, homework, whatever) instead of having to read the whole thing. Saves some time, and gives you something worth listening to while you do the mundane things.

[Lobster]

Do more developers not mean rather more management?

Perhaps.

At some point, someone who is able and willing and has the time, will offer or be nominated to put together the first Alpha of 4.2 based on what Barry releases as 4.1.1

They will not be a committee, co-op or foundation but a developer.
(who knew that)

Any other developer, individual, organization or management can then decide how best to support that person

We can nominate MU, Barry, Warren (whoDo), Nathan, Hacao, Sigmund, Dougal, John Murga, Pizzasgood, HairyWill, Tombh, Raffy etc as much as we want as developers for the next Puppy 4.2
.
If they are willing and able, we can support them.
Any developers producing patches upgrades etc make code available.

Developers produce distros.
I will be quite happy to support a co-op or other initiative but I will offer more support to an able developer of 4.2
I am sure we all will.

Anyone up for it?

[MU]

I would not be a good choice, at least not as a "lead developer".
Reason: I have different needs to a system.
Puppy is optimized for very old hardware, for speed.
Muppy is fast, too, but not so optimized. Instead, it is prepared to serve more general purposes.
E.g. dbus/hal/udev slow down the start of Muppy. But as they are part of the system, it becomes very easy to use KDE or Gnome in addition, that rely on them.
So Muppy will keep that, while Puppy uses Barrys new optimized uevent system.

It would consume too much time, to manage two systems with such a different focus.

I will however try to contribute to Puppy in the "Puppy spirit", but will not be a developer with continuous reliability - I do not have enough time for that.

One example is the new Kernel 2.6.27.
I tried to document very detailed what I did, to get it working in Puppy 4.1, and I created a test iso.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=34341
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=34186

I chose Puppy, not Muppy, so that the experiences I've made, can be used by the Puppy community, to update Puppy on their own with a new Kernel.
People now could test it, and start to compile more wifi modules.
Now that it seems to work well, I will go and continue to integrate this solution in Muppy, too.

Also in future, I will continue like this.
Do basic work in Puppy, and then migrate it to Muppy.
This will allow Muppy to stay compatible with Puppy, and give the community back things, as Muppy also "takes" very much from Puppy.

And of course I will continue to nag you concerning localization.
Puppy 4.1 has no gxmessage, so the dialogs can not display chinese tztztz...

Mark

[divisionmd]

Hello,

Just a short question here:

Is the Puppy project in need of funding?

Best Regards,
Johan

[tronkel]

divisionmd wrote:

Is the Puppy project in need of funding?

Sorry about maybe departing from this thread a little.

The Puppy project appears to have lost its main Linux engineer - one of the best (maybe the best) in the Linux business.

The community is in a mess and doesn't really know where to go from here. It could well be, that since there appears to be no available replacement within the Community, the only way to actually replace Barry is to headhunt/import someone from elsewhere - even if it costs money!

In the long term, this may be the only solution that can save the project.
If such a person could be found, who is capable of making the the base versions, the Community could then get behind any derivatives spawned from the base version - i.e. it would be business as usual.

Failing this we are stuck with "base" versions that are in reality derivatives of derivatives - a sure road to extinction for the project.

So yes, I do think the project needs funding to ensure its survival in the long term.

[alienjeff]

Is the Puppy project in need of funding?

I do think the project needs funding to ensure its survival in the long term.

Slippery slope, momentum analogy, and domino effect alerts.

[raffy]

Funding is part of the chicken-and-egg phenomenon in a community-based project. Creating the formal organization requires funding, and donors would require that a formal organization exists.

In the case of the long-proposed Puppy Linux Foundation, registering the entity would require lawyer and agency fees, and (depending on the country/state) a seed fund. Whether the entity is a coop or foundation, there will be fees for full incorporation, a legal assistant to handle the paperwork, and possibly hosting fees for a teleconference.

As to the project having no replacement developers, I beg to disagree. Developer Mark Ulrich or MU (as an example) has been here for a long time, and student Pizzasgood is right now in college (a sophomore) training himself for the future (and that future includes Puppy).

If the project has funding, we can offer salary to MUso that he can spend more time for the project. Also, we can offer scholarship to Pizzasgood so that he could render student assistant time for the project, or even to do thesis for Puppy Linux.

There are other active community members with similar characterization, like Zigbert/Dougal/Hairywill (developers) and cb88/SirDuncan/phantrongnghia (student) - sorry if I missed lots of other names.

[alienjeff]

@raffy

Scholarship for Pizzasgood?

You've been into the KoolAid again, haven't you, Raffy?

[raffy]

Those are examples, AJ. The essence is that funding can be used for purposes that are aligned with the future of the project.

Am sure you have better ideas, so please post them.

[Sit Heel Speak]

There does need to be a single "top dog," a Linus Torvalds or a Barry Kauler. It is the only way a unified face, a logical progression of an identifiable, distinct OS called "Puppy," can be maintained in the world.

A Puppy Linux Foundation with the incorporation structure of the 501(c)3 non-profit corporation of the United States of America, is how all the J.Z. Knight and suchlike "new age channeling churches" are structured, and I think this is the ideal way to structure the organizational vehicle for an evolving computer OS as well.

Such a church typically has an executive board: "Spiritual Leader," a vice-president in case the top dog goes away, a secretary, treasurer, and two or more Trustees. It hires on retainer as consultants its attorneys, financial advisors and so on.

The secure ability of a non-profit 501(c)3 executive board to exercize, and to retain exclusive rights against all challenges (including from within) to its ownership and control of the intellectual properties have been vigorously tested, and these rights have stood up in court in the USA for more than fifty years. IANAL but presume that an OS would be governed in courts by these "new age channelling church" precedents and be similarly well defensible.

U.S.A. incorporation laws vary in specifics by state; I don't know how Australia, the UK, Canada, Germany et cetera vary. Nevada has the strongest protections against financial disclosure, but Washington is time-tested to be both "new-age-church friendly" and "operating system vendor friendly." And so, just by experience-of-observation-alone, this state is where I would propose the Puppy Foundation incorporate. A 501(c)3 corporation incorporated here in the State of Washington need hold its in-person meatspace board meetings only once every two years. At such board meetings the list of candidates for executive board positions can be presented all-at-once to the in-person assembled membership, which need not meet any of the standard percentage-attendance metrics for establishing a "quorum." Typically the slate is re-elected by voice acclamation. Thus the incumbents can be highly confident of retaining say-so over who sits among them on the board.

A 501(c)3 corporation has all the "individual severability" protections of a for-profit corporation. Thus, for example, if I were the "Spiritual Leader" and I went off on a rant on the topic of my well-known views on a certain historical allegation which I hold to be nothing but myth, views which are in fact illegal to promote in not fewer than 14 countries, then even if I were arrested the Puppy Foundation would not be liable.

And yet such a corporation has the right to hold assets, to issue products, and to collect and dispense funds, all tax-free. About the only thing it cannot do is "engage in for-profit business." The way the local example churches of which I am aware get around this is, when a "member" asks for a "CD of a channelling" there is a "requested (not required) donation," and the CD is then "given to the member in commemoration of the gift." Donations are tallied up at the end of each "congregational meeting" in the aggregate, but it is not necessary to identify each individual "contributor" unless the amount donated is substantial, if memory serves the threshold is US$1,000. But since the various Puppies and puplets are all available for free download such considerations do not apply and are not a worry in the ordinary course of dispensation of the distros.

HTH, SHS

[Caneri]

Is the Puppy project in need of funding?

@divisionmd yes always..costs are real world and will need to be addressed

Slippery slope, momentum analogy, and domino effect alerts.

Hi Aj,

Well there is that constant burr under the blanket aka project..and it's called finance. No matter how you look at Puppy, it costs money to produce and serve to the public. The slippery slope is NOT addressing these concerns...that said, a proper way to handle donations now that Barry is changing course will be needed and I think the co-op or whatever is decided needs to address this part of real life projects.

Best,
Eric

PS..Hey Jeff...keep the punches coming...I like the banter. Also I think what Raffy meant was scholarship for pizza..meaning we all need pizza and cheese,pepperoni etc...or at least pizzasgood will agree..sorry Raffy, I just had to tease this one.

[Pizzasgood]

Cheese is an important part of a balanced life.

@Raffy: actually, I'm a junior now. Time flies when you're doing homework...

Scholarships would be nice, but I think Puppy himself would need it more than I do. I have two good hands and two good feet, and a nice thick melon on top.


Hosting fees for a teleconference!? Maybe I have been in Linux too long, but I feel certain there are free methods. Like I said, I haven't messed with VoIP yet, but I thought Skype was free for Skype->Skype calls?

If nothing else, shouldn't be that hard to write our own basic software. Maybe it wouldn't be as well optimized, but it would get the job done.

[ttuuxxx]

Cheese is an important part of a balanced life.

@Raffy: actually, I'm a junior now. Time flies when you're doing homework...

Scholarships would be nice, but I think Puppy himself would need it more than I do. I have two good hands and two good feet, and a nice thick melon on top.


Hosting fees for a teleconference!? Maybe I have been in Linux too long, but I feel certain there are free methods. Like I said, I haven't messed with VoIP yet, but I thought Skype was free for Skype->Skype calls?

If nothing else, shouldn't be that hard to write our own basic software. Maybe it wouldn't be as well optimized, but it would get the job done.

Well I haven't tried voice on Linux either, When I did use a mic for voice chat on windows, I would use, Yahoo chat, Msn messenger, and Paltalk they all had free voice and MSN had free video also, Paltalk you had to pay $20 a year for video, So a quick fix could be yahoo chat on wine? If someone wanted to make a working package that would interesting to try out. I never use wine either. On yahoo you can make your own chat room also.
ttuuxxx
ttuuxxx

[HairyWill]

wow
I've managed to hold back from posting for 5 pages.
Thanks tombh for starting this thread.

I think that losely formed dynamic teams is the only way that most people will contribute, no-one will tolerate being told what to do. It is possible for this to sit inside the formal structure of a coop.

I agree that subversion is crucial. I know that sourceforge is out as a repository for the whole iso. Now that caneri has a root shell on a box would it be possible to put the iso on that? I presume the basic structure is just a directory each for initrd and pup_xxx.sfs.

I think that the bar needs to be set fairly high for getting write access to this repo with some sort of apprenticeship/mentoring/sponsorship scheme for others to gain trust for write privileges. This may mean saying to the odd person, "you are not good enough yet" which is hard, though this probably is just implicit in no-one responding to a request for sponsorship. My personal choice would be to only give write access to someone who had previously released a successful puplet with significant modifications to initrd. I should note that would count me out. I believe that leaves MU, PG and Dougal, any others?

[Pizzasgood]

I know that sourceforge is out as a repository for the whole iso. Now that caneri has a root shell on a box would it be possible to put the iso on that? I presume the basic structure is just a directory each for initrd and pup_xxx.sfs.

I think so. Depends on how much space he has. Probably should be fine; I tend to not realize just how cheap storage has gotten nowadays. For an SVN repo to hold the extracted Unleashed tree, we would probably need around 800 megabytes upfront. That would grow over time, but SVN stores changes as changes, not entire copies, so that would help a little. On the other hand, it stores all the changes, so they can build up. Especially if we recompile Puppy from source - I think that would add a significant amount. So over several years we could need several gigabytes.

Another thing is bandwidth. In general I doubt that would be an issue. But doing an initial checkout of the entire tree would be pretty hefty - 800 megs a pop. So, what would need to be done is to download the packages from the package server, where they're also compressed. Then extract them. Then run a script to move things around slightly into whatever structure we use for the SVN, and to add some "initial" SVN settings so that you can just run 'svn update' to bring it up to date with the server. That script could be part of the unleashed-core package, or a separate similar one, and would be updated with each version of Puppy (we could automate it's generation). That way it avoids putting a burden on the SVN server.

Of course, you don't actually need to have the entire tree on your machine, only the parts you're working on. But if you want to build a test ISO, or if you're working on something spread across multiple packages, it would be more convenient. So in my case, I'd probably set up the entire tree on my PC, but if I'm away from home, I'd just checkout the package I'm working on.

[Caneri]

HI PG,Will and All,

Both new servers will be very fast, but there may be a space issue (hard drives are smaller), so for a time I will need to have developers delete their old,unused,dated files and delegate what will be allowed on the new setup to fit active files on the drive. This delegation will be best done in the community so to whoever doesn't get enough space...we will need to put it to the team to decide.

The space issue will need to be addressed if the puppylinux.ca project is to morph into another stream. Then a discussion on how to best use the new servers will be needed. What I mean about devs trimming the files is that if someone has an alpha or beta that has gone final then delete these old files or if a guy is using .ca for his entire project then we need to find a way to fit these files onto the new drives....hmmm...this can get touchy but a consensus for the .ca project will need to be handled soon as a community decision or I will decide myself which is not my first choice for sure.

Remember I need people's skill here to be able to do the things that are needed...so please chime in if someone has the knowledge and time to run with the new changes coming....sorry but I'm a tad behind on some skills that will be needed.

I will continue my quest for proper sponsorship to enhance the original account to include more control and access to admins...let's hope

Best,
Eric