Hi all,
Being new to FreeBASIC, I am gradually feeling my way around the website, resources, and particularly the Forums.
Just went to take a familiarization-glance into the Development Forum, and found that a special status is required.
I'm certainly curious about what's happening with the development of the FB project, even though I would not be qualified to help or participate in most of the efforts & activities. Still, I would like to find out the course & history of the product, what kinds of issues are current, the kinds of directions that are being considered.
So, I was surprised that a registered & logged-in person would not be able to look in on the Development-threads, inform himself on this very important topic. Actually, the central, key topic.
Does this mean that, really, only a specially selected corps of individuals are allowed (welcome?) to be involved with the development of FreeBASIC?
What's the deal with Development?
Thanks! - Ted
Development Forum access?
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dumbledore
- Posts: 680
- Joined: May 28, 2005 1:11
- Contact:
Thank you, dumbledore.
I read through the linked thread, "Hiding the Dev forum". Sad to say, the contributions consist mainly of sarcasm and trivialization. Those are not ways of addressing a topic, but ways of avoiding & deflecting discussion.
Some of our best "Quotations" are driven by the same situation that FB's leaders are experiencing. One quote goes something like, "You should never watch the Law or your sausage being made".
It can be disconcerting to have people - some of them uninformed & even unconstructive (sarcastic, insulting..) - tossing in their (plebian) two-cents worth as the top talent goes about trying to hammer out the vision & implementation of a project.
Firstly, letting the general FB-community-of-interest watch (most of) the process of development does not make them decision-makers. V1ctor is the boss. There are several insiders who assist v1ctor closely. Letting the plebes watch, inform themselves, does not give them power. The top dogs still make the decisions.
Second, this is an Open Source Project. As such, it should lean toward being open, should therefore invest an added measure of effort to deal with the costs & inconveniences of being open. Yes, I acknowledge the irritations of openness, alongside the benefits.
I am a strong fan of Open Source, and I support & practice LAMP. However, I realistically see some bad things going on in LAMP, to the extent that they hurt the whole idea of it. We should all try to tone down those trends that bode poorly for OSS.
The core leadership of the project all know one another, and have discreet access to one another when there are genuinely private or sensitive things to be worked out. To place the entire topic of Development off-limits to the common membership seems quite unfortunate ... and seriously marginalizes nearly everyone who would be enthusiastic about FreeBASIC.
To respond to those who raise questions with or about the leadership & their policies/choices with sarcasm and attack, just to shut the discussion down and get rid of it, is not ... one of leadership's finer moments.
Ted
I read through the linked thread, "Hiding the Dev forum". Sad to say, the contributions consist mainly of sarcasm and trivialization. Those are not ways of addressing a topic, but ways of avoiding & deflecting discussion.
Some of our best "Quotations" are driven by the same situation that FB's leaders are experiencing. One quote goes something like, "You should never watch the Law or your sausage being made".
It can be disconcerting to have people - some of them uninformed & even unconstructive (sarcastic, insulting..) - tossing in their (plebian) two-cents worth as the top talent goes about trying to hammer out the vision & implementation of a project.
Firstly, letting the general FB-community-of-interest watch (most of) the process of development does not make them decision-makers. V1ctor is the boss. There are several insiders who assist v1ctor closely. Letting the plebes watch, inform themselves, does not give them power. The top dogs still make the decisions.
Second, this is an Open Source Project. As such, it should lean toward being open, should therefore invest an added measure of effort to deal with the costs & inconveniences of being open. Yes, I acknowledge the irritations of openness, alongside the benefits.
I am a strong fan of Open Source, and I support & practice LAMP. However, I realistically see some bad things going on in LAMP, to the extent that they hurt the whole idea of it. We should all try to tone down those trends that bode poorly for OSS.
The core leadership of the project all know one another, and have discreet access to one another when there are genuinely private or sensitive things to be worked out. To place the entire topic of Development off-limits to the common membership seems quite unfortunate ... and seriously marginalizes nearly everyone who would be enthusiastic about FreeBASIC.
To respond to those who raise questions with or about the leadership & their policies/choices with sarcasm and attack, just to shut the discussion down and get rid of it, is not ... one of leadership's finer moments.
Ted
The dev forum just replaced the original one in SF.net, that was also for team members only (set that way by default by Sourceforge, what seems to be the common practice in F/OSS).
If it was open for read access, i'm sure there would be post in other r/w forums to discuss the discussions (du'h), what wouldn't be really pleasant.
Btw, there's nothing exciting going on there, just world domination plans, as everybody else has.
If it was open for read access, i'm sure there would be post in other r/w forums to discuss the discussions (du'h), what wouldn't be really pleasant.
Btw, there's nothing exciting going on there, just world domination plans, as everybody else has.
Morning v1ctor,
You're absolutely right, saying that the practices here at FB are nothing out of the F/OSS ordinary. That's true, but Open has some serious malfunctions. A raft of them, actually, big & little, personal & organizational. They can be costly to any project, but FB is especially vulnerable. Open is good, but it needs more attention to cleaning up the nonsense.
FB is not aimed at a hard-core, mainstream F/OSS audience, or shouldn't be. Serious OSers use serious languages, not BASIC. FB is not going to wake up some morning and find the OS world sharing it's pillow. Naw.
You want a massive audience, v1ctor? There is one available to you, but it is not the glamorous insider LAMP community, it's the whopping population of low-life casual 'programmers' who made BASIC the most popular & heavily used language in the past, and could well do so again. But you can't woo these people by treating them like LAMPers, 'cause they ain't and aint' gonna be.
If you were hoping for world domination, or even to spring for your own server some day, then "nothing exciting going on here", which might be a little too much the truth, ain't gonna do it. ;)
Ted
You're absolutely right, saying that the practices here at FB are nothing out of the F/OSS ordinary. That's true, but Open has some serious malfunctions. A raft of them, actually, big & little, personal & organizational. They can be costly to any project, but FB is especially vulnerable. Open is good, but it needs more attention to cleaning up the nonsense.
FB is not aimed at a hard-core, mainstream F/OSS audience, or shouldn't be. Serious OSers use serious languages, not BASIC. FB is not going to wake up some morning and find the OS world sharing it's pillow. Naw.
You want a massive audience, v1ctor? There is one available to you, but it is not the glamorous insider LAMP community, it's the whopping population of low-life casual 'programmers' who made BASIC the most popular & heavily used language in the past, and could well do so again. But you can't woo these people by treating them like LAMPers, 'cause they ain't and aint' gonna be.
If you were hoping for world domination, or even to spring for your own server some day, then "nothing exciting going on here", which might be a little too much the truth, ain't gonna do it. ;)
Ted
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MystikShadows
- Posts: 612
- Joined: Jun 15, 2005 13:22
- Location: Upstate NY
- Contact:
Thulefoth, Welcome to the forum :-).
FB is exciting in itself. There's no two ways about that. What it offers and what it promises are definitaly exciting. Let me explain Vic's reply using the following metaphore.
When you see a hot babe on the street (Errm I'm assuming you're a guy from this point on ;-) ). DO you say to yourself (wow, what nice hair, never seen such a nice _____________ insert one (or more) of 2000 parts of the anatomy here ;-).....
OR...do you say to yourself, "Man, I wonder what her heartbeat is, I wonder how fast her metabolism is, I wonder what her blood pressure is or I window how her neurones look like?. Here I'm assuming this isn't how you describe a hot babe to your friends ;-). lol
As a FB user, I don't care what makes FB tick (well to a point I do, but I don't need all the gory details like how many times a part of the compiler has been retouched to fix the same bug. The important thing is the bug is fixed, the only important thing is that it does tick.
And even if you wanted to know the gory details, it's open source, take a look at the souce code. :-). Although it's not quite perfectly documented all over, the naming conventions and overall code structure makes it very easy to follow and understand so my hat is up to all involved in the codebase, excellent job.
FB is exciting in itself. There's no two ways about that. What it offers and what it promises are definitaly exciting. Let me explain Vic's reply using the following metaphore.
When you see a hot babe on the street (Errm I'm assuming you're a guy from this point on ;-) ). DO you say to yourself (wow, what nice hair, never seen such a nice _____________ insert one (or more) of 2000 parts of the anatomy here ;-).....
OR...do you say to yourself, "Man, I wonder what her heartbeat is, I wonder how fast her metabolism is, I wonder what her blood pressure is or I window how her neurones look like?. Here I'm assuming this isn't how you describe a hot babe to your friends ;-). lol
As a FB user, I don't care what makes FB tick (well to a point I do, but I don't need all the gory details like how many times a part of the compiler has been retouched to fix the same bug. The important thing is the bug is fixed, the only important thing is that it does tick.
And even if you wanted to know the gory details, it's open source, take a look at the souce code. :-). Although it's not quite perfectly documented all over, the naming conventions and overall code structure makes it very easy to follow and understand so my hat is up to all involved in the codebase, excellent job.
Aquarius,
Each product has an 'audience', or is looking for one. Sometimes, a product is aimed at an inappropriate audience. There are several reasons why this happens: it tends to be a fairly common cause of failure, even in cases where the product is otherwise excellent.
People who imagine themselves as serious, successful members of the mainstream Open Source Movement tend very strongly (overwhelmingly) to identify with what they consider to be serious languages, which would be chiefly C and C++. Typically, predominantly, they consider BASIC a joke, and there is a degree of active enforcement of this attitude.
If we set out to develop an excellent BASIC product, and we aim it at a community/audience that primarily sees/uses BASIC as an object of ridicule, we are making a mistake.
It is not uncommon for a new type of product to end up being successful with an audience that was either not recognized/identified when the product was being made, or with an audience that was not anticipated to have an interest in the product. However, BASIC is not a new type of product. The role of BASIC in the wider community is extremely well understood & known. Additionally, there is a deeply engrained set of attitudes associated with BASIC.
So, FB should develop a narrative that speaks to those who will not have a problem accepting an excellent BASIC product, and should forego parsing it's narrative to appeal to those folks who think they need C or C++ to be properly respectable ... because there is nothing that can be said to those people to change their minds.
Ted
Each product has an 'audience', or is looking for one. Sometimes, a product is aimed at an inappropriate audience. There are several reasons why this happens: it tends to be a fairly common cause of failure, even in cases where the product is otherwise excellent.
People who imagine themselves as serious, successful members of the mainstream Open Source Movement tend very strongly (overwhelmingly) to identify with what they consider to be serious languages, which would be chiefly C and C++. Typically, predominantly, they consider BASIC a joke, and there is a degree of active enforcement of this attitude.
If we set out to develop an excellent BASIC product, and we aim it at a community/audience that primarily sees/uses BASIC as an object of ridicule, we are making a mistake.
It is not uncommon for a new type of product to end up being successful with an audience that was either not recognized/identified when the product was being made, or with an audience that was not anticipated to have an interest in the product. However, BASIC is not a new type of product. The role of BASIC in the wider community is extremely well understood & known. Additionally, there is a deeply engrained set of attitudes associated with BASIC.
So, FB should develop a narrative that speaks to those who will not have a problem accepting an excellent BASIC product, and should forego parsing it's narrative to appeal to those folks who think they need C or C++ to be properly respectable ... because there is nothing that can be said to those people to change their minds.
Ted
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Shadowwolf
- Posts: 341
- Joined: May 27, 2005 7:01
- Location: Canada
- Contact:
thuleforth nonsense what are you talking about.
and FB is aimed at a hard-core coders other wise victor would have simple cloned qb and been done with it and not implement some very C like concepts.
also FB always had a large user base it was born from with in the Qmmunity so from it very conception it had a large user base even when it was simple a post back at the QBN about a new 32bit basic compiler it had a large backing of most of the QB community which is a very large user base. now that is has grown it is drawing in pb users along with any of basic user that comes its way.
also if you notice that link from dumbledore isn't in the dev forum it part of the off topic sub form so anyone can go there. only two people with in that thread are devs. so i don't think you should use that thread as a base of which the dev forum operates.
also victor should keep the dev forum closed to the general public for one big reason. if people start seeing things being said or done they don't like there going to complain there going to spam victor or others devs email address. and the worst part is this complainers won't have the knowledge base on the subject to even have a right to complain.
and FB is aimed at a hard-core coders other wise victor would have simple cloned qb and been done with it and not implement some very C like concepts.
also FB always had a large user base it was born from with in the Qmmunity so from it very conception it had a large user base even when it was simple a post back at the QBN about a new 32bit basic compiler it had a large backing of most of the QB community which is a very large user base. now that is has grown it is drawing in pb users along with any of basic user that comes its way.
also if you notice that link from dumbledore isn't in the dev forum it part of the off topic sub form so anyone can go there. only two people with in that thread are devs. so i don't think you should use that thread as a base of which the dev forum operates.
also victor should keep the dev forum closed to the general public for one big reason. if people start seeing things being said or done they don't like there going to complain there going to spam victor or others devs email address. and the worst part is this complainers won't have the knowledge base on the subject to even have a right to complain.
But Open Source and Open Discussion aren't the same thing.
The developer's forum here is the same as it was on SourceForge. At SourceForge non-developers couldn't get to it (as I understand) and yet no one complained.
Here people are complaining because it's out in the open. I can't see the forum either and in the end I don't care. If it helps the developers work out problems with FB then its a good thing!
<rant>As to BASIC being a joke; I have meet a few "code snobs" who think this, but in all honesty I've heard this most often from BASIC programmers who have an inferiority complex. I used BASIC throughout my undergrad degree (in physics, minor in mathematics with a good deal of computer science courses) and while I got a couple of giggles none of them were from my chair who used BASIC too! </rant>
Just because the box is there, it doesn't mean it has to be opened! ~Pandora's conscience
The developer's forum here is the same as it was on SourceForge. At SourceForge non-developers couldn't get to it (as I understand) and yet no one complained.
Here people are complaining because it's out in the open. I can't see the forum either and in the end I don't care. If it helps the developers work out problems with FB then its a good thing!
<rant>As to BASIC being a joke; I have meet a few "code snobs" who think this, but in all honesty I've heard this most often from BASIC programmers who have an inferiority complex. I used BASIC throughout my undergrad degree (in physics, minor in mathematics with a good deal of computer science courses) and while I got a couple of giggles none of them were from my chair who used BASIC too! </rant>
Just because the box is there, it doesn't mean it has to be opened! ~Pandora's conscience
Plus I was trying to make a joke, which might not have been in the best taste. That's not really what goes on in the dev forum, but it never hurt anyone to have a little fun, either. ;)Shadowwolf wrote:also if you notice that link from dumbledore isn't in the dev forum it part of the off topic sub form so anyone can go there. only two people with in that thread are devs. so i don't think you should use that thread as a base of which the dev forum operates.
I agree that most current open-source software uses C or C++, but there are also a number of projects using alternate languages (Python comes to mind, though it doesn't have the same target audience as FreeBASIC). I think FreeBASIC has a chance of becoming quite widespread in the OSS world.
Thanks for the welcome, MysticShadows!
For sure, we don't necessarily need to know about the guts of a language program, to appreciate & use it. That's true. It's even more true in this case, because the language is BASIC.
I have come out in support of the "Strong-Man" model of software development, and I acknowledge the importance of some degree of privacy for the core group of developers.
I know that it's a problem, that the discussion of 'inner' development topics in public can lead to a lot of 'peanut-gallery' action, much of it of little or no value. However, this does not erode the decision-making power; to the degree that some of the side-commentary is noise ... it's just noise. Ignore what deserves ignored.
Doing things in the open is a good thing, worth putting up with some non-injurious heckling.
What is conspicuous is that everything that falls under the topic of Development has been declared off-limits. Some things are going to be sensitive, but most things are not. Channels for the occasional discreet consultation are available.
Ted
For sure, we don't necessarily need to know about the guts of a language program, to appreciate & use it. That's true. It's even more true in this case, because the language is BASIC.
I have come out in support of the "Strong-Man" model of software development, and I acknowledge the importance of some degree of privacy for the core group of developers.
I know that it's a problem, that the discussion of 'inner' development topics in public can lead to a lot of 'peanut-gallery' action, much of it of little or no value. However, this does not erode the decision-making power; to the degree that some of the side-commentary is noise ... it's just noise. Ignore what deserves ignored.
Doing things in the open is a good thing, worth putting up with some non-injurious heckling.
What is conspicuous is that everything that falls under the topic of Development has been declared off-limits. Some things are going to be sensitive, but most things are not. Channels for the occasional discreet consultation are available.
Ted
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Shadowwolf
- Posts: 341
- Joined: May 27, 2005 7:01
- Location: Canada
- Contact:
open transparent view of discussion shouldn't happen the peasant don't need to know the details. this is not a democracy so the user base has no rights to knowing how things will unfold for the simple reason i said before they will start complaining when they see something they don't like.
victor and the other devs are only human and if they see a small group making alot of noise about something they might be inclined to A) obey there wishes and not make the change that Π$/- off that group even if it for the betterment of FB or B) simple quit from disgusted of all the annoying complainers.
open transparent view of what the devs are planing is not need it. a tight run dictatorship system is by far the best system for running a project like this if victor has to please the mass for every little changes he makes nothing will get done.
victor and the other devs are only human and if they see a small group making alot of noise about something they might be inclined to A) obey there wishes and not make the change that Π$/- off that group even if it for the betterment of FB or B) simple quit from disgusted of all the annoying complainers.
open transparent view of what the devs are planing is not need it. a tight run dictatorship system is by far the best system for running a project like this if victor has to please the mass for every little changes he makes nothing will get done.
Shadowwolf,
I agree that the potential programming power of a FreeBASIC or other BASIC is, certainly for all practical purposes, as "hard" as we care to have it. There is nothing twinkie about the product.
QB (etc.) is, sad to say, not a strong community. It is in an advanced state of collapse, and the process continues.
In every community of users, there are complainers. In order to have a community at all, in order to grow a community, in order to resuscitate a dying community (which is what we have), we have to accept a mix of folks. Some of them are a drag, but we can handle it.
Ted
I agree that the potential programming power of a FreeBASIC or other BASIC is, certainly for all practical purposes, as "hard" as we care to have it. There is nothing twinkie about the product.
QB (etc.) is, sad to say, not a strong community. It is in an advanced state of collapse, and the process continues.
In every community of users, there are complainers. In order to have a community at all, in order to grow a community, in order to resuscitate a dying community (which is what we have), we have to accept a mix of folks. Some of them are a drag, but we can handle it.
Ted
Keeling,
The bottom-line principle of Open Source is that access to & familiarity with our software resource-base, by as wide an audience as possible, is a major improvement over various closed models. To assert that "Open Discussion" is a poor idea, while Open Source is a good idea, strikes me as a thesis that will be difficult to successfully defend.
It seems a pretty strong bet, that the benefits we hope to get from Open Source practices in general, would also work to a similar advantage, in the discussion-phase of our source codes.
Prejudice is a humongous reality. We have prejudice against folks, and we have it against programming languages. It's important.
Ted
The bottom-line principle of Open Source is that access to & familiarity with our software resource-base, by as wide an audience as possible, is a major improvement over various closed models. To assert that "Open Discussion" is a poor idea, while Open Source is a good idea, strikes me as a thesis that will be difficult to successfully defend.
It seems a pretty strong bet, that the benefits we hope to get from Open Source practices in general, would also work to a similar advantage, in the discussion-phase of our source codes.
Prejudice is a humongous reality. We have prejudice against folks, and we have it against programming languages. It's important.
Ted