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Re: Re: Launchpad: Mea maxima culpa

 

David wrote:
--- In kicad-devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, Dick Hollenbeck <dick@...> wrote:


I am currently experimenting a little with the project I created, and
I plan to request a removal next week, as I will not have time to do
anything else with that. I hope it satisfies you.




Thank you. Your efforts have succeeded, apology is accepted and I will not bring it up again.

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The Launchpad software has been open sourced now, so for those with the capability to install it and support it, it can in theory run anywhere, not just launchpad.net. I have put in a request to sourceforge that they install and support it, just to keep our options open, and to make them aware of a competitor that is probably hurting them. Competition breeds success. Sourceforge seems to be putting in more effort lately, since they have added support for quite a few web apps recently, one of which is Trac. They also have git and bazaar, as pre-installed packages that we can pick from on their site.


Switching to lauchpad software or anything else, regardless of location, assumes we could ever build a reasonable consensus among our project participants.

Manveru, are you now of the opinion that we should be using Launchpad software (regardless of where it is hosted) ?


What is your opinion of bazaar?


And of git?


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(BTW, for those who also want to offer an opinion, there are over 14,000 projects at Launchpad from which you can choose to test out the features of the Launchpad software. It really does not have to be Kicad source that you check out, say using bazaar. Check out some projects that are using blueprints. I am willing to continue to work towards determining a consensus among active project members.)


I know that everyone's time is scarce. So maybe you do not have time to play around with a launchpad project. (I have never used either web app, not Trac nor Launchpad. I just know that the yahoo mailing list is inadequate.)

So what about this line of reasoning: I am struck by the fact that Canonical is a company with fairly deep pockets (by virtue of their owner, irrespective of the company's income statement). And one has to ask why would they invest in launchpad software when they could have used Trac, unless they felt that Trac or any other web app like it was not good enough for them? And is it not likely that they succeeded in surpassing Trac? This is a line of thought that can be followed without even looking at either package. And don't they have superior development resources to propel the software faster than Trac or any other project web app in this category, going forward?



Thanks

Dick


Dick,
I am willing to create a poll if that is helpful in measuring interest in Launchpad. What do you feel is the correct question to ask in the poll? I can set it up quickly once I know what to ask.

David.


Thanks for this offer. I wonder what the output of a poll is, and what does it assume? The questions that I would have *about such a poll* are:

1) Are all votes considered to be equal?


If yes, this is actually counter-productive in my view, since we don't actually have a democracy here. (A democracy or a republic requires a constitution.) Given the circumstances, IMO, votes should be weighted in proportion to the size of the respective contributions of each voter. Otherwise it is like allowing folks to vote who have not paid taxes, and that doesn't seem to work too well, since they just vote themselves money. It is also not a meritocracy, where according to wikipedia, reward is according to talent. As of now, it is simply a system which respects the value of past contributions. In my view Jean-Pierre by far would get the heaviest vote. But I suspect that if he saw there was widespread support for something which was not going to adversely affect him, that he would not go out of his way to oppose it.




2) Is there a way to determine how certain individuals voted?



Nonetheless, it might be a reasonable way to simply test the waters, and to shed light on the degree of support for something, which can be illuminating for those sitting on the fence. During the U.S. constitutional convention of 1787 there were these so called "votes of the committee of the whole", wherein the vote of a committee was to be considered an advisement to the entire body, and was non-binding. But in the special case of the "committee of the whole", the committee was comprised of all members of the convention. So when this committee voted, the outcome was simply an advisement to the entire body. It was sort of a "--dry-run" command line option if you will. Read the book "Decision in Philadelphia", to learn about these geniuses. These cats were way smarter than the buffoons we see in office today, and more respectful of each other and of mistakes made in the history before them.


It is probably something we should do under these circumstances. Let's see if we can come up with some questions for our committee of the whole.


Dick








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