Re: [steering-discuss] Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Base record access unacceptably slow

Hi :)
I imagined the different lists would take the discussion in different directions 
relevant to their own part of this problem.

I think most of the companies i mentioned already employ devs to work on 
projects relevant to those organisations.  If they could each give one person 
half a week to Base, to collaborate much as volunteers do, then we could get 
somewhere other than backwards = which is where we are going right now and have 
been for a long time.  It's going to need more than just 1 talented person to 
sort it out because skills are needed in different directions.  Base is a major 
blocker to desktop (& small office) Gnu&Linux uptake (ok, games are and 
multimedia too but that's outside our scope).  


If some of those companies had direct control over half a dev in LibreOffice 
then they could offer a very high level of support to clients in the future 
especially if the half had an indepth knowledge of Base by then.  


I don't think TDF can afford to wait until people get annoyed enough (as RMS 
suggests) because it's easier for people to just stay with other products and 
the rest of the Suite they come with.  A little work and leadership in taking 
Base forwards might even attract a lot of volunteers to it instead or runing for 
the hills.  


Most of the co-operatives i have worked in have paid consultants, part-time 
workers, accountants, lawyers and all the rest when and where needed.  Many of 
the ones that refused to do so folded or got absorbed.  

Regards from
Tom :)





________________________________
From: Michael Meeks <michael.meeks@novell.com>
To: steering-discuss@documentfoundation.org; Tom Davies 
<tomdavies04@yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: users@global.libreoffice.org; documentation@global.libreoffice.org; 
hc.stoellinger@aon.at; tc@tomcloyd.com
Sent: Wed, 27 July, 2011 18:44:25
Subject: Re: [steering-discuss] Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Base record access 
unacceptably slow

Hi Tom,

On Wed, 2011-07-27 at 18:07 +0100, Tom Davies wrote:
> We need to attract some devs to this project.  Preferably paid devs because 
> there is a bit of a quagmire trying to work out which patches have which 
> licences and so which cannot be incorporated into the LGPL and which can.

    Ho hum; the legal / ownership angle is not so difficult to sort out;
usually finding & fixing the bugs is more problematic ;-)

    Your suggestion to get lots of companies to fund more developers is a
great one - but can be organisationally problematic. Ultimately I
suggest the most reliable way is to find and/or encourage new developers
to do the work. There is a great spot for someone to love & 'own' base
in the project, it's a responsible role, and we'd really appreciate
someone to do it.

>   I think those researchers could move into coding or documentation after 
> even perhaps just 3 - 6 months with any luck.  How could we get this going 
> forwards before the whole Suite falls over due to the 1 app's failures?  

    This is like RMS' amusing 'myth of the starving genius' :-) If there is
a serious bug that annoys enough people: particularly people that are
able to understand and build databases (which are near being programmers
anyway) - then *surely* if it matters enough, one or other of them will
start to dig into the code to fix it.

    There is no magic bullet here, or other white knights coming to fix
bugs in LibreOffice I'm afraid. If we want it done, we have to do it
ourselves. If you know what a database is, and how to use it, then you
are probable quite able to invest some time in building the latest code
and having a poke at it.

    Sorry,

        Michael.

-- 
michael.meeks@novell.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot
-- 
Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to steering-discuss+help@documentfoundation.org
Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/
Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette
List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/steering-discuss/
All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted