[Scooby] Re: [Cosmo] A couple big ideas: cosmo release and server project merge

[Priscilla Chung]

>
Simlar to Sheila, I'm catching up on everything  so I'm tyring to  
touch on points that seem relevant to me, but not every point in the  
threads. If it's has already been discussed, then ignore this,  
please! Thanks, -Priscilla


> 1.  Merge Cosmo and Scooby SVN trees, mailing list and IRC channel.

>
>> I'd argue that we want *one* user list for osaf (chandler, scooby,  
>> and cosmo service), that the end user population will care about  
>> the whole system, not the way we divide things into projects as  
>> engineers.
>
> I think that the sheer volume of traffic will make this impossible  
> at some point.    The amount of traffic will be a deterrent to  
> people subscribing to a single list.

I'm neither for or against it, but similar to Ted's point, perhaps in  
future when there are more contributors for Scooby, perhaps there may  
be people who are just interested in the Scooby technology (AJAX) and  
not in Scooby project at all? And same goes for Cosmo & Chander??  
Though, I'm sure if there is too many confusing discussions we could  
always go back to having both channels.


> 2.  Release Cosmo 0.3 -- less ambitious than previously planned --  
> in time for Scooby 0.1
>
Okay, so after speaking w/ Matthew & Bobby earlier today, I think we  
have consensus that YES it would be awesome to release them at the  
same time. That is of course if Cosmo takes more then 2 wks to  
release the next 0.3, then I think it would make sense to release  
Scooby w/ out Cosmo.

In addition, although this release completely makes sense to combine  
the Scooby and Cosmo releases, it does not necessarily makes sense to  
do this all the time. As I would expect there will be more Scooby  
releases then Cosmo and that perhaps every other Scooby release,  
perhaps it will sync with a Cosmo release?

>> Whether or not we merge server communities, what would we have to do
>> to release Cosmo 0.3?
>>   - Do a small bit of spit and polish on the new administrative GUI.
>> Priscilla is signed up for at least some of this.
>
> this isn't strictly required. the ui can be released as is. to be
> honest, i don't think prettying up the ui is particularly useful at
> this stage. it just adds risk of introducing bugs at this late date.

I agree w/ NOT prettying up the UI, but a UI 'review', including  
should be part of the release process, similar to testing. And what I  
mean with a UI 'review, is to have someone on the UI/Design team  
should have a run though of the app. similar to what I did w/ Matthew  
today. Pick one day and go though the list of UI issues, file them in  
bugzilla to SWAG is this a 0.1 release or for the next milestone. Or  
is there something that can be done 'for now' for this upcoming  
release, and will do for next release.

> i also think that this artificial separation has helped keep bobby and
> me from feeling empowered to contribute to each other's code. i know
> that sometimes i wake up with much more interest in what's going on
> with scooby that day than with cosmo, but because i'm not "on the
> scooby team", it doesn't feel right to offer to work on one of their
> tasks. similarly, bobby seems reluctant to get his hands dirty with
> the cosmo reports code, when he's currently the person to whom that
> code is most important, and indeed he understands how it's supposed to
> work much better than either me or bkirsch. so i think making us all
> part of one project with explicit commit access to the entire server
> svn repo, would address this. yes, i know that the scooby team could
> accept me as a committer and vice versa, but again, that seems
> artificial and overly complicated.

I'm not sure if I understand the artificial separation here. Everyone  
at OSAF (currently, and may expand to contributors in the future)  
should be welcome to listen and participate in on the Scooby status  
meetings @ 1:30PM PST every Wednesday. There's no reason why you  
can't use that time to share info. with Bobby. I believe Bobby also  
attends the Cosmo meetings.. maybe there's more to it then the  
surface that I see, but then maybe it's just me being confused here.

>
>> the idea that we want to think of this as one coherent system from a
>> user's perspective, and not completely loosely coupled projects that
>> have little relationship to each other beyond using standard  
>> protocols.
>
> yeah! maybe to us developers they are two separate things, and
> certainly to some users, but i think the majority of users, in time,
> will not see the distinction, thinking of the whole thing as "the
> calendar server".
>
> do any of us think of zimbra as a whole bunch of projects? nope. it's
> zimbra. but i'm sure their development community has lots of
> divisions.


I don't think merging the projects make sense. It's also very common  
to have products falling under one big umbrella. Perhaps I am bias  
'cause as a designer/UI, there is this bird eye view of seeing all  
the projects and trying to make them consistent w/ one another. As  
I'm learning about the open source world, I do believe contributors  
outside OSAF will look at OSAF as the umbrella. Such as the Mozilla  
umbrella, and the projects that fall under their umbrella, Firebird,  
Thunderfox...etc.  ;) (just checking to see if you're paying  
attention.)  Point being, my guess is that contributors are usually  
very specific in what they want to contribute or build upon.


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