Planning Council members, Cross project mailing list members,
(especially John Duimovich, Randy Hudson, and Dave Orme),
Some of you have complained about the way I wrote my email yesterday
and I accept that criticism and will try to write less inflamatorily in
the future. At the same time, however, I may have obscured my real
point, so at the risk of making things worse, let me try again:
- I was not complaining about the fact that GEF and VE were missing
from the Callisto update site (well, I was a little, but that wasn't
the real point). I know that in the real world things change -
schedules change, staffing changes, priorities change, etc - and that
sometimes deadlines just can't be met. Right now I have an auto-reply
vacation message on my email that says exactly that, so believe me, I
know this.
- What I was complaining about is that the project leadership of
those projects hadn't taken the time to communicate to the rest of the
Callisto team.
This Callisto Simultaneous Release is hard a problem. A simultaneous
release is a hard problem just within a single company where everyone
reports to the same VP Engineering. It's an even harder problem in open
source where the projects are staffed by (effectively) volunteers and
from multiple competing companies. The only way we are going to make
this work is to keep all of our colleagues well informed of our status,
our progress, our problems, and any potential schedule slips. Just
posting to our own project websites or mailing lists isn't good enough
- we have to reach out to our colleagues (I'm talking about the
collective Callisto team) and actively keeping everyone informed.
If we cannot commit to doing that, Callisto will flop. You know that. I
know that. The key to making Callisto work isn't going to be technology
- the key is going to be the communication channels that we build
between the projects. Frequent, active, accurate, and timely
communication. And, as Tyler points out, respectful. Respect for the
schedules and dependencies of others which includes letting the rest of
us know when you can't make a deadline, meet a requirement, or attend a
meeting.
That's what I meant to say,
Bjorn
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