Thoughts on Project Structure (Was Re: [Maxima] Roundup of the Cast)

--- Kevin Cosgrove <kevinc@doink.com> wrote:
>Yes that, and deciding what goes into the stable releases
>and into the development releases.  From what I've seen,
>projects with a dedicated skilled leader succeed, and
>others are much less successful.  Maybe that's a truism?

Usually that leader is the project founder - since it's his/
her project, they have a voice of authority. 

>It seems possible that the project could also succeed if
>we could get consensus on what we're going to do, when
>to do it, how to decide when it's done & good enough for
>a certain class of release, and then how/when to repeat
>this.  Would you call that a charter & plan?

That also works, but I think what would be needed here is 
a hybrid - a core group with skills and high standards who
work on the core system and also evaluate packages people
write to see if they are good enough to include, and a sort
of second tier which either picks a task from a wishlist we
put togeather, or starts their own effort as they 
choose, and the core group can evaluate it and include it 
when it reaches high enough quality.  

Specifically, we have a couple people who are good lisp 
coders and experienced with computer algebra - they should
probably be the only ones with CVS write access.  

Here's the key question - who out there feels comfortable
being in the position of having CVS write access and being
a key developer?  We need to have someone step forward.  
(Or get nominated :-)

If we don't have anyone like that willing to lead, we can
of course make do - what I'd propose in that case is 
that every so often we hold a scheduled group audit of new 
code and patches, and then based on a group concensus
update the distribution.  Maybe start an IRC channel, and
then every so often meet as a group to hash out issues.

At any rate, we need to make a decision soon - we need a 
framework within which bug fixes can become part of CVS,
and a way for new efforts to be added to the distro.

CY

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