[ros-dev] Roadmap I'm sticking to

[Peter Millerchip]

I'm just a lurker but I wanted to respond to Ged - I hope that's ok!

The "work on what you want" ethic works well for lots of open source
projects, and I can see it starting to work well for ReactOS too. The
way I see it (i.e. from an outsider's point of view), ReactOS's
management structure is slowly changing into a something more
successful like Linux's. I'll explain what I mean below.

Linux is successful as an open-source operating system project because
Linus Torvalds works on whatever the hell he wants to, which is "his"
version of the kernel. He accepts patches he likes, and refuses ones
he doesn't. He doesn't care what other people work on, but if they
send him nice patches he'll incorporate them. People use Linus's
kernel because it's good and high quality.

The analogous situation here is arwinss, which for us is (roughly)
equivalent to the Linux kernel. Aleksey works on it just because he
wants to - it's his "do whatever the hell you want" project. Gabriel
Ilardi then acts as a rough equivalent of a distro like Ubuntu - he
takes Aleksey's arwinss, packages it up with various other ReactOS
bits and pieces and makes nice ISOs of it for people to download.

This kind of work ethic is what has made Linux into a successful
project, and I see no reason why it won't make ReactOS successful too.
Aleksey's roadmap is where he says "hey, this is what I'm going to do,
help me if you find it fun to help". And that is GOOD, that's how
Linus Torvalds works.

Likewise with Gabriel's ISOs - they work better than the normal
ReactOS ISOs, and that again is good. People have fun making better
"distros" of ReactOS, and that is great for all of us as it pushes the
project forwards.

As a relative outsider to the project, I feel very positive to see
developments like this! I think it shows that ReactOS will be a
success. We should celebrate the "do what you want" ethic, not try to
destroy it!

Pete.


On 9 April 2010 11:38, Ged Murphy <gedmurphy at gmail.com> wrote:
> No, you can't tell people what to do. However, we should be able to get
> together as a team and discuss what's really important for the project, lay
> down some common goals and deliver them.
>
> It's nice to have an acpi battery module, or digital video broadcasting
> support, or a new isapnp driver, but what are we actually gaining from this
> as a project? What we really need is a stable win32k, we need a shell that
> doesn't belong in the dark ages, we need USB, we need to be able to run apps
> without bringing the whole OS down to its knees.
>
> As a group of intelligent people, we should be able to discuss what's really
> important, prioritize the work and commit to doing it. We all surely have
> the same goal, to see reactos become usable and valuable to the public, so
> why can't we work towards this as a team??
>
> It's all well and good being a project that allows people to work on
> whatever they want, but when that work ethic is essentially killing the
> project, you have to wonder if it's the best way of doing things.
>
> What's taken the fun out of reactos is that people work on what they want,
> and that's usually unimportant things. I want to see an operating system
> mature and become usable but our current eithic of "work on whatever the
> hell you want to" is killing the project.
>
> Open source sucks for this exact reason, there's no real management, no
> structure and no goals. Hence 99% of open source project fail. The only open
> source projects which do succeed have management, structure and goals and
> not this "Anyone can work on whatever the hell they want to".
>
> Ged.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ros-dev-bounces at reactos.org [mailto:ros-dev-bounces at reactos.org] On
> Behalf Of Timo Kreuzer
> Sent: 09 April 2010 10:50
> To: ReactOS Development List
> Subject: Re: [ros-dev] Roadmap I'm sticking to
>
>
> That's probably a good Idea, but I still like to point out, you cannot
> tell anyone what to do.
>
> You can put up a list of what's important/required and I'm likely to
> pick something from it from time to time.
> You can ask me to do something and I might be like *sigh*, well ok...
> (halfassed attempt to help out)
> Or you can tell me to do something, and I might be like... sorry, got no
> time. Very busy, RL issues, you know... ;p
>
> That's the way we all work, isn't it? We do it for the fun. If it's no
> fun we don't do it or not do it very enthusiastically, which means
> halfassed and ineffective. Of cause success is fun. But we all decide
> for ourselves what is success and how we can achieve success.
>
> If I don't like to fix some winetests, but like to fix amd64 branch
> instead, or implement mode switching, do you want to keep me from doing
> that? Probably not.
>
> So a roadmap might point out what is important to be done and what is
> not. But it cannot make people work on a specific part at a specific time.
>
> Timo
>
>
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