About partecipation into the development of ISAR

About partecipation into the development of ISAR

[Roberto A. Foglietta]

Hi all,

 I wish to express my opinion about the participation into development
of ISAR hoping that this will help people to focus on things that
really matter, especially considering that ISAR is a open-source
project that is leveraged by business by Ilbers GmbH and then used by
some other companies which have a mutual interest in having some
benefits in adopting it.

 First of all, it is important to notice that ISAR is not a project as
big as the Linux kernel and does not involve thousands of people.
Driving a hugely massive project like the Linux kernel requires strict
rules of engagement otherwise no any tool will scale up enough to deal
with varieties.

 This means that adopting the same strict rules of engagement used for
such a big project is counterproductive because it does not leverage
all the possibilities. It does not seem an important problem because
after all, ISAR is a niche product used by professionals but someone
might hope that this will change in future. However, in the best
optimistic forecasts, it will never be as huge as the kernel, so it
will never require such strict rules.

 This brings to us in evaluating a more flexible way of contribution:

 1 - patch over e-mail are the default and prefered way of contribution
 2 - git repository in fork are also a very easy and quickto integrate
sources of contribution
 3 - github allows to open tickets (issue), to have a wiki, a
discussion board, etc.
 4 - github allows people to comment on the code of the patches, in line!

Now, all of these tools have benefits and also side-effects. Let examine them:

 1 - having a single way of contribution simplifies the process which
makes sense for those who drive an open source project in their spare
time but ISAR - fortunately - has people that are paid to develop the
project, so they can also deal with other ways of contribution.

 2 - git as a way of contribution cannot be neglected and it is a very
powerful tool to merge among different projects carried on by
different people and organisations. Definitely, git cannot be left
behind as a contributing way.

 3 - github tickets (issue) are very useful to keep an organised track
of the development. We might debate about the convenience of Ilbers
GmbH in keeping it in public but cannot overlook the important
contribution that github and more in general - project management
tools - brings into a business driven development. Who opposes this,
sasy that many successful companies are wrong in adopting these kinds
of tools.

 4 - among many ways of commenting code - pure text email with 80
columns breaks - is not the best way of dealing with it even if it
seems very "hacker" and we are used to it since a long time ago.

 The ISAR project is probably marginal for Ilbers GmbH and this
explains the reason to leave the project management to the good will
and to the people's sentiments of a public Google Group m-list. Even
if playing "hackers" seems cool, it is not so much when it impairs
business and moreover there is a world outside there to conquer for
those who are open-minded...

 My best wishes for a productive 1492,
-- 
Roberto A. Foglietta
+49.176.274.75.661
+39.349.33.30.697

Re: About partecipation into the development of ISAR

[Roberto A. Foglietta]

On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 at 18:33, Roberto A. Foglietta
<roberto.foglietta@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
>  I wish to express my opinion about the participation into development
> of ISAR

POST SCRIPTUM

Quality and maintainability: the reasons because we use patches and
simple commits. This is also the reason because it is useful to create
branches, rebase the commits on it and merge branches among them.

So, for everything else which is more complex than an atomic bugfix or
a simple feature addition, the git is THE definitive tool. Then, git
cannot be left behind as a source of contribution because it is not
only a way to track the changes and store the code but also a powerful
{development, integration, test} tool especially when it is combined
with documenting, ticketing and CI/CD tools like in github.

Finally, this is the reason Microsoft bought github!

Best regards, R-

Re: About partecipation into the development of ISAR

[Henning Schild]

Am Wed, 4 Jan 2023 19:03:44 +0100
schrieb "Roberto A. Foglietta" <roberto.foglietta@gmail.com>:

> On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 at 18:33, Roberto A. Foglietta
> <roberto.foglietta@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> >  I wish to express my opinion about the participation into
> > development of ISAR  
> 
> POST SCRIPTUM
> 
> Quality and maintainability: the reasons because we use patches and
> simple commits. This is also the reason because it is useful to create
> branches, rebase the commits on it and merge branches among them.
> 
> So, for everything else which is more complex than an atomic bugfix or
> a simple feature addition, the git is THE definitive tool. Then, git
> cannot be left behind as a source of contribution because it is not
> only a way to track the changes and store the code but also a powerful
> {development, integration, test} tool especially when it is combined
> with documenting, ticketing and CI/CD tools like in github.
> 
> Finally, this is the reason Microsoft bought github!

The whole "should we adopt gitlab or github" instead of mailing lists
has been discussed several times. You do have very valid points and the
email based workflows cause all of us pain every once in a while.

But you must not confuse "github" (or any other lock-in hoster) with
git. Using plain "git" and "git-send-email" and a mailinglist for
issues and reviews is the "best in class" when it comes to OSS. You are
independent of any web-hoster, you can keep archives forever and switch
providers as you like and see fit.

Any project that does pull request, reviews and alike on some vendors
locked-in website will have a very hard time to stay in control and
switch the provider.

It is all about openness for contributors and the project, even before
Microsoft bought github. Maybe today also because they did ... we use
"git" and no funny vendor that swallows all our data without a way to
ever escape and move it to another place.

And when it comes to people working on Isar ... many work on other
projects that also opt for mailinglist-based, not just the kernel. So
it does not cause much headache ... what causes headache is keeping
issues and MRs open on the web-thingy the code might be hosted on at
the moment.

You seem to be proposing to walk into the vendor-lock-in arms of
Microsoft for convenience and mouse-web-stuff. No thanks, i already
suffer enough from not being able to SMTP with @siemens.com (nowaday
Microsoft powered) much like you could not SMTP from google. Or maybe i
should use Outlook ... and Windows while i am at it.

Henning

> Best regards, R-
> 

Re: About partecipation into the development of ISAR

[Roberto A. Foglietta]

On Wed, 4 Jan 2023 at 21:18, Henning Schild <henning.schild@siemens.com> wrote:
>
> Am Wed, 4 Jan 2023 19:03:44 +0100
> schrieb "Roberto A. Foglietta" <roberto.foglietta@gmail.com>:

>
> But you must not confuse "github" (or any other lock-in hoster) with
> git. Using plain "git" and "git-send-email" and a mailinglist for
> issues and reviews is the "best in class" when it comes to OSS. You are
> independent of any web-hoster, you can keep archives forever and switch
> providers as you like and see fit.

This is a very good point. However, we should remember that the
Ilibers' ISAR project is hosted on Microsoft GitHub not necessarily
the only storage or repository but for sure the official one and the
m-list is a Google Groups group. However, this is perfectly fine
because the m-list is not a strategic asset while having a local
backup automatically updated of a git repository is not such a burden.
So, the world will not end with the end of Microsoft nor Google, not
this part of the world at least.

I never said that {git, git send-email, m-list} are tools to abandon.
I said that companies need more sophisticated tools and their business
benefits greatly because of these tools. However, probably Ilbers has
its own project management suite - internally - with a tickets system
but shared only with those who bought the commercial support, I
suppose.

Finally, I love the idea of living in a cave with candles for the
light and a firecamp for cooking because one day civilization and
technology could fall apart and after all habits are hard to change
once you learn how to live with them despite they are so impairing
unless you expect that all the rest of the world will fit in this bill
as well, then good luck! Is this a reasonable analogy for "playing
hackers"? LOL

Best regards, R-