[sword-devel] New public git mirror of Sword SVN trunk and why

[Troy A. Griffitts]

I deserve the rebuke for the release schedule. The release schedule was not even mentioned in the email to which I responded.

The NASB ball was dropped by at least 2 volunteers before I personally took the task to finally make it happen (unwillingly, but I did commit and spend quite a bit of time on it, so I deserve the rebuke).

I have been following the discussion on the SFTP patch and hadn't seen it come to a conclusion yet regarding what might be necessary to detect SSL support in cURL. I don't feel I've been negligent with this.

I have no sympathy and honestly think the email Jaak sent was rebellious by nature, having never had a patch submitted by Jaak, nor any recent complaint or correspondence, along with the accusation of issues with "code quality" being the reason for the fork.

I take the criticism I deserve, but none of your valid criticisms have anything to do with the original thread.

Regarding release schedules, our private email conversation, Karl, were productive and I thought I had outlined a plan to you. I accept the accusation of a deficiency in release times. I tend to be a perfectionist and want to get everything in that I know is pending before a release, we keep SVN very stable-- worst case, packagers already apply patches to our releases and can easily release a distro package from HEAD if they choose-- but I told you I would move forward with a plan to settle with what we have in HEAD now and release unless we had warranted pending items from an actively developed solution to a problem voiced. I'm not sure why the public criticism now, but accepted.

Feel free to publicly vent your frustrations about release schedules, but please start a thread that warrants constructive conversation rather than the heavily loaded, non-constructive, generic insults expressed by a non-contributor which started this thread.

Troy



Karl Kleinpaste <karl at kleinpaste.org> wrote:

>"Troy A. Griffitts" <scribe at crosswire.org> writes:
>> I'm not quite sure why the rebellious nature of your email, instead
>of
>> a friendly conversation
>
>Troy,
>
>I can summarize with a pair of excruciatingly simple, personal examples
>why this sort of "rebellious" plan comes into play.  I've got no
>relationship to it myself (I'm not a git user yet myself and have no
>beef with SVN, being unconvinced of the existence of some groundswell
>of
>objection to SVN use; this discussion is the first I heard) but I
>understand the motivation perfectly well.
>
>The short summary answer is simple:
>Friendly conversations manifestly don't accomplish anything.
>
>The long detailed answer requires those mentioned examples.
>
>1. 29 Aug 2007 (5 years, 16 weeks ago)
>I sent a note to sword-devel, my first in /agent provocateur/ mode,
>arguing for a more regular release of the engine, trying to express a
>firm opinion while still being supportive.  At that time, 1.5.9 had
>been
>out for a year-plus and 1.5.10 had been pending much too long.  I
>argued
>that the needs of BibleTime, then-GnomeSword, and the other frontends
>were not being properly served by the excessively long delay in a world
>where frontend releases were happening between 2x and 5x per year
>apiece.  At that time, your response was to (claim to) commit to a
>rough
>6-month release schedule for the engine.
>
>As Greg observed, this time it's been 26 months.  That's 20 months too
>long.  That's 4+ times as long as your (claimed) commitment.
>
>2. 10 Nov 2008 (4 years, 5 weeks ago)
>I sent you a private note about NASB, with a couple others Bcc'd, some
>of whom subsequently made themselves known and a couple of whom did
>not.
>My note pointed out that, at that time, we were approaching 5 years of
>waiting for one measly module to come to fruition -- a module that is
>arguably the #2 most-requested Bible module.  Yes, it's Just Another
>English Bible...but it's *NASB*.  It had already then been in beta more
>than 2 years -- it was already in beta before I got involved with
>GnomeSword.  Again, you made fervent promises to see to finishing up
>the
>NASB module (or module set, including the Heb/Grk lexicons) right away.
>Well...5 years then plus 4 more years now is 9 years, and the 9th
>anniversary of the plan or intent or mere fond hope for a NASB module
>to
>be released will come up in early January, based on original
>sword-devel
>chatter about it.  The truly sad thing is that all the NASB module
>needs
>is one afternoon of serious hackery, then kick it out the door to
>Lockman.  The Sword-using world has been waiting another 4 years for
>you
>to find one afternoon.
>
>You know of course that in just the last few days I sent you a couple,
>very brief private notes about the need for 1.next.  Nothing combative,
>nothing remotely "rebellious," just noting that it is impossible for me
>to make another Xiphos release until you make another Sword release:
>Driven by chatter here, I committed Xiphos to XHTML filters, which are
>incomplete in current release.  And then, pointedly, I forwarded one
>IRC
>question, plaintively asking whether Sword ever gets updated any more.
>
>In all seriousness, what living, vibrant, active open source project
>goes 2+ years without a release?
>
>Given that the issue has been raised publicly now, and that your
>defensive reaction takes the form of criticism for being "rebellious,"
>well, Troy...
>
>Please look in a mirror.  Look closely at the face you see there.
>
>This isn't rebellion.  It's frustration.
>This isn't rejection.  It's dejection.
>This isn't denial (of you).  It's acceptance (of what you've shown us).
>
>A great many believe, on evidence, that without occasionally whacking
>you over the head with a calendar -- in essence, "see, it's overdue
>again" -- no Sword engine release would ever occur at all.  Your
>priorities are very seriously detached from those of the rest of us.
>
>That many of us have had to ask, over and over and over again, over a
>period of many years, to please get with the program and provide the
>support that the rest of us need, is or ought to be testament enough
>that something is very wrong, and has been very wrong evidently
>throughout the life of Sword -- since years before I showed up, surely.
>
>You are the founder of The Sword Project, which puts you in charge of
>it.  As its titular leader, I wish you would spend some serious time in
>prayer and come to a conclusion -- a real conclusion, embodying a real
>commitment, one way or another -- as to whether you are willing to
>provide such leadership, and get on with things.
>
>Please lead, follow, or get out of the way.
>
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-- 
Sent from my Android phone with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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