[Debian-olpc-devel] Core Sugar packages and SEETA-sugar team

Fri Jul 16 10:32:18 UTC 2010

On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 11:02:12PM -0400, Luke Faraone wrote:

>On 07/15/2010 12:16 PM, Jonas Smedegaard wrote:
>> First of all, I apologize for my silence lately.  I am involved as a 
>> technician in a theater project and have been busy preparing, and now 
>> running, a performance in Turin, Italy.  This theater performance 
>> ends sunday - next one starts mid September.  I will attend Debian 
>> Debcamp and Debconf in New York in a week and 2 weeks onwards.  All 
>> in all I hope to very soon be more responsive and productive again on 
>> this list :-)
>
>Great. I wasn't sure if you had noticed my earlier emails about 
>sugar-terminal-activity or if I had missed something you had asked me 
>to do, wrt that package.

Sorry!

I *thought* of posting a note about being busy at the moment, but 
apparently I didn't actually write it.  And apparently you failed to 
read my mind :-)

>I'll also be at Columbia for DebConf10, so I'm glad I'll see you there!

Ah, great!

>> David has told me that you already work close together on IRC.
>> Personally I seldom use it[2], but if it works for you then great.  
>> It would be nice, however, if you maybe now and then carry over the 
>> "top of the iceberg" of what happens in IRC land to the mailinglist.  
>> Automated or manually, I don't care.  But so that us (or am I the 
>> only one?) following this mailinglist but not engaged on IRC do not 
>> loose out on issues discussed, problems fought etc.
>
>This pretty much summarizes what we've been discussing in IRC:
> * Who works on what tasks
> * Random things where people get stuck and seek out quick assistance
>
>I didn't think it would be useful to spam people's problems to the 
>list, especially when they can be solved quickly via real-time chat, 
>and weren't often very Debian-OLPC specific. If you would prefer, we 
>can change that policy.
>
>As far as I know, all major, relevant decisions as to how activities 
>are to be packaged that been made on IRC were also mentioned or 
>discussed on the mailing list. Examples: 
>http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-olpc-devel/2010-July/002600.html 
>, 
>http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-olpc-devel/2010-July/002568.html.
>
>I'm sorry if our efforts are not as transparent as they should be, and 
>will endeavor to stress such openness that in the future.

Please don't be sorry: my comment was not meant as a rant or complaint.

It is great that you have teamed up, and it is certainly great if you 
have found a working style that is productive for you.  I don't want to 
*exchange* that for e.g. principle of transparency.  What would be great 
is if good principles and comfortable working habbits can go hand in 
hand.  So my intend was more of a "would you mind changing habbits?"

I think we should not initially be overly concerned about noise on 
mailinglists.  I consider it a _development_ list, not an _announcement_ 
list, so would expect subscribers to be interested not only in summaries 
but also the "noise" of problems, discussions, coordinations and 
"hanging out" together.

It is easier to later adjust: Simply speak up if you (i.e. anyone) feel 
the list generally gets too noisy, or that some specific posts are 
considered off-topic.  That, in my experience, works well with the huge 
Debian lists, so let's try excercise it here as well :-)

Concretely, it seems to me that e.g. a discussion of "who works on what 
task", when decided outside this list, might feel more like a "secret 
society" and if instead moved here, perhaps could inspire more 
volunteers to chime in.  Only if you are concerned that too many 
volunteers will disturb your steady working pace at that IRC channel 
does it make sense to me to keep discussions there.  But really this is 
only suggestions - you know best what you like and what works for you
:-)

>> On a related note, I have noticed that recent posts by David and Luke 
>> are cross-posts both to this mailinglist and an Ubuntu list.  I 
>> dislike cross-posting in general.  [...]  Let's try agree on a 
>> sensible posting style - I hereby open that debate by stating that 
>> cross-posting is bad, and suggest we simply don't do that.
>
>Okay, that's reasonable. If something's Ubuntu-specific I'll post it 
>there, but otherwise I think we can live with having everything else 
>over here :)

great that you agree.

And again - I really do not want this to be "rules" that we set up, but 
more suggestions on how to try both work and communicate optimally.

I don't have solutions.  I have opinions and ideas - and lots of it not 
tried out in reality: I am new myself in working in teams :-)

Great that you are all here!!

  - Jonas

-- 
  * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
  * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

  [x] quote me freely  [ ] ask before reusing  [ ] keep private
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 836 bytes
Desc: Digital signature
URL: <http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/debian-olpc-devel/attachments/20100716/d9b551c1/attachment.pgp>