Open Source Meeting/2007-08-23

Transcript from the 2007-08-23 Open Source Meeting

[14:00]	Rob Linden:	there's a lot of dead sims around here.....what's up?
[14:01]	There is no suitable surface to sit on, try another spot.
[14:01]	Soft Linden:	Not sure - I know that I'm seeing a *ton* of dataserver crashes right now resulting from database connection timeouts, and they've been hammering out some email issues.
[14:01]	Jansen Miles:	Hello.
[14:01]	Soft Linden:	Hey hey
[14:02]	Soft Linden:	I also know I'm running on UPS power right now - we're enjoying a freak storm out here. Says I've got 23m left. Blech!
[14:02]	Jansen Miles:	Good lord.
[14:03]	Soft Linden:	UPS power is for my home office, Jansen. Not SL :)
[14:03]	Jansen Miles:	Oh, you're at home. Okay. :)
[14:03]	Soft Linden:	But it's pretty crazy. Only in a third storey building, but the wind's bad enough that the whole building's asway.
[14:03]	Rob Linden:	and you're still on the intarweb...I'm impressed
[14:03]	Jansen Miles:	Where is that?
[14:03]	Soft Linden:	Chicago
[14:04]	Jansen Miles:	Ah, living up to it's nickname. Alright.
[14:04]	Soft Linden:	I've got the DSL, computer, hub and main monitor on a UPS. I'll starve before I lose my 'net!
[14:04]	Jansen Miles:	Now you just need a diesel generator and you're set.
[14:05]	Soft Linden:	That's a pretty unusual use of floattext, Saijanai - you do that?
[14:05]	Wyn Galbraith:	That was fun.
[14:05]	Rob Linden:	any ideas for agenda items?
[14:06]	Jansen Miles:	Hi Wyn, Sai, Liana.
[14:06]	Wyn Galbraith:	Where's the agenda?
[14:06]	Wyn Galbraith:	Hello everyone.
[14:06]	Rob Linden:	well, there's nothing there
[14:06]	Liana Linden:	Hellos to all.
[14:07]	Wyn Galbraith:	Make something up ;)
[14:07]	Soft Linden:	Well, I think we've got this weekend's festivities if we want to talk about that in advance. :) I've got another thing I'm curious about if we want to dive into it after...
[14:07]	Wyn Galbraith:	LOL
[14:07]	Rob Linden:	ok....I've got something:
[14:07]	Saijanai Kuhn:	hey all
[14:07]	Turtle whispers:	typically rude. He really means:
[14:07]	Turtle: Hey Jansen Miles; Hey Wyn Galbraith; Hey Liana Linden; Hey Soft Linden; Hey Rob Linden;
[14:07]	Wyn Galbraith:	Behave Turtle ;)
[14:07]	Rob Linden:	well, first the easy one: who's going to SLCC besides me?
[14:07]	Wyn Galbraith isn't.
[14:07]	Saijanai Kuhn:	no money
[14:08]	Jansen Miles:	Salt Lake Community College?
[14:08]	Wyn Galbraith:	Yeah. second that, need job ;)
[14:08]	Squirrel Wood:	Mmm. Open Sauce ^^
[14:08]	Soft Linden:	Supposed to be at a wedding this weekend, but it being nearby and all, I'm getting moooore and more tempted... :>
[14:08]	Liana Linden:	heh
[14:08]	Wyn Galbraith:	Do both.
[14:08]	Liana Linden:	http://slcc2007.wordpress.com/
[14:08]	Jansen Miles:	Ooh. Can't be in Chicago or I'd be there.
[14:08]	Soft Linden:	Wedding's a bit of a drive. I'd probably only be able to catch the tail on Sunday.
[14:09]	Soft Linden:	Just Rob so far, though?
[14:09]	Wyn Galbraith:	Ah.
[14:09]	Rob Linden:	looks like. I know Gigs is giong to be there, but he's not here
[14:09]	Liana Linden:	In case you didn't catch my note to sldev, we're having an in-world gathering to listen to Rob announce the Hippo Award winners.
[14:10]	Liana Linden:	If you'd like to join us, let me know and I'll put you on the guest list.
[14:10]	Wyn Galbraith:	Wow a guest list.
[14:11]	Squirrel Wood:	I spy a Blue Linden ^^
[14:11]	Wyn Galbraith:	Inworld or outworld?
[14:11]	Wyn Galbraith gets a net for Blue.
[14:11]	Liana Linden:	not so exclusive as all that -- just a way to keep the numbrs under control. :-)
[14:11]	Squirrel Wood:	over by the giant chair
[14:12]	Rob Linden:	so: here's a more substantive agenda item. we seem to have a bit of drift between Linden Lab's goals in viewer dev, and the community, which seems apparent on sldev@
[14:12]	Soft Linden:	Ya. Not much worse than setting up a space and realizing you're about half a sim under. Especially with streaming media stuff, it's horrible seeing a wall of people one region over who can't hear or see media streams!
[14:12]	Wyn Galbraith is sad to say she hasn't paid attention. "I'll have to catch up."
[14:12]	Squirrel Wood:	What I have noticed with the current viewer.. it either crashes pretty soon after being started or, if it decides not to crash, runs stable for hours...
[14:13]	Rob Linden:	I'm wondering if a) people here agree with that and if so b) what (if anything) should be done)
[14:13]	Rob Linden:	so, on the stability front:
[14:13]	Rob Linden:	we're painfully aware that we've got a lot of work to do
[14:14]	Squirrel Wood:	couple days ago I crashed like three times within five minutes. Then everything ran smooth for hours
[14:14]	Wyn Galbraith had a conversation like this earlier today.
[14:14]	Rob Linden:	there's actually a bit of a struggle as we figure out what the right mix of short term bug fixes vs long term architecture fixes (that will make short term bugfixes obsolete)
[14:15]	Squirrel Wood:	You ARE doing a lot more already than people are willing to recognize
[14:15]	Wyn Galbraith:	I was remembering how bad it was when I started SL, long ago and far away when I knew nothing, I could barely move. There has been tremendos improvement.
[14:15]	Rob Linden:	thanks for recognizing that Squirrel and Wyn
[14:15]	Wyn Galbraith:	Even with having unsupported graphics chips. I say so all the time too Rob, to those who complain a lot.
[14:15]	Rob Linden:	I think we're starting to become "good enough to criticize", to borrow an old Jobs quote
[14:16]	Squirrel Wood:	I may just be a lousy hobby programmer but I know how people like to bitch and whine about things they have no clue of and how they refuse to read up on posted information.
[14:16]	Wyn Galbraith:	I can imagine the amount of code it takes to run SL. Must be close to a nightmare to keep a hand on all of it.
[14:17]	Wyn Galbraith:	So I'm totally amazed it's this good
[14:17]	Rob Linden:	so....there's an interesting social problem here that I'd like to try to solve
[14:17]	Rob Linden:	(so as not to bitch and moan about bitch and moaners) ;-)
[14:17]	Wyn Galbraith:	This is a new frontier as well. Can't get it all right right away. Look how long it took the Internet to get stable.
[14:17]	Saijanai Kuhn:	the most difficult thing I have with the viewer code is figurout out what does what
[14:17]	Wyn Galbraith:	People forget easily.
[14:18]	Squirrel Wood:	getting those whiners to stop whining is an impossible task. They LIKE doing it.
[14:18]	Rob Linden:	here's one of the problems I'm seeing. I think there's a lot of strong feedback that we need to hear
[14:18]	Rob Linden:	...but it's not organized very well
[14:18]	Wyn Galbraith:	That's true, you're fighting a losing battle in some senses Rob.
[14:18]	Rob Linden:	...and I think there's ways of guiding the conversation without harping on the old points
[14:19]	Wyn Galbraith:	True.
[14:19]	Wyn Galbraith:	Still I feel that no matter what you do some will still complain.
[14:19]	Soft Linden:	Well, I don't think we want to get anyone to "stop whining" where open source is concerned. It would be nice if everyone recognized some of the work, but there's more to do. We want to make sure we're engaging people meaningfully who are in a position to fix some of the things that bug them, and to make sure anywhere where we could be standing in the way... we get out of the way. It would be good to know if there's anywhere where we're not doing that.
[14:20]	Saijanai Kuhn:	for me, the biggest obstacle is just getting started. I've hunted for code that does specific things for literally hours and still can't find it
[14:20]	Rob Linden:	so first, to harp on the old points: getting people to do more of this in jira and wiki rather than unstructured email threads
[14:21]	Wyn Galbraith:	The picture is so huge and I'm still realitively new to the inner workings of SL. People blame jira as being too hard to deal with, I'm use to bug tracking of all sorts, but others are not.
[14:21]	Wyn Galbraith:	Doesn't help to have blogs out there stating problems with jira that put the bug in peoples minds that make it even harder for them.
[14:21]	Jansen Miles:	Perhaps a major component of the open source activities should be existing code documentation, then?
[14:22]	Rob Linden:	Jansen, I'd love to see more of that, actually
[14:22]	Saijanai Kuhn:	I would like to HELP, but not sure how to get started... (again)
[14:23]	Soft Linden:	Saijanai, a good place to start with that would be to post to the list what you've found, and what you still can't piece together, maybe offering to document it yourself once people help you fill in the blanks.
[14:23]	Rob Linden:	omg...lemme count the ways
[14:23]	Wyn Galbraith:	A list is a good idea.
[14:23]	Rob Linden:	Saijanai, are you on sldev?
[14:23]	Saijanai Kuhn:	yes
[14:24]	Soft Linden:	( power's back <3 )
[14:24]	Rob Linden:	k....one thing that would be incredibly helpful is cat herder on the mailing list
[14:24]	Wyn Galbraith:	By cat herder what would they have to do.
[14:24]	Rob Linden:	find a conversation that's going off the rails, and direct it to jira or wiki as appropriate
[14:24]	Wyn Galbraith knows cats ;)
[14:24]	Rob Linden:	so....lemme find the list guidelines....
[14:24]	Wyn Galbraith hrms.
[14:25]	Rob Linden:	https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLDev
[14:25]	Wyn Galbraith:	Ok, I can try. Of course now that means I have to catch up ;)
[14:25]	Rob Linden:	ok....so, what I'm asking for is not a heavy handed approach
[14:25]	Rob Linden:	...but a light touch leading by example
[14:25]	Wyn Galbraith:	Just a gentle nudge.
[14:26]	Wyn Galbraith:	You want actual responses in the sldev?
[14:26]	Rob Linden:	that's a nice low-commitment way to start getting into the swing of things
[14:26]	Rob Linden:	yes, please!
[14:26]	Wyn Galbraith:	Maybe with a jira or wik reference?
[14:26]	Wyn Galbraith will give it a swirl.
[14:26]	Rob Linden:	actually try extracting the salient points of an email thread, and figure out where they should be captured
[14:27]	Rob Linden:	(wiki, jira, maybe the agenda of one of these meetings)
[14:27]	Rob Linden:	this type of activity is sooooooooo useful, you can't imagine
[14:28]	Saijanai Kuhn:	I'd like to help with that Wyn...
[14:28]	Wyn Galbraith would love help.
[14:28]	Saijanai Kuhn is good at keeping things on-topic
[14:28]	Turtle: on-topic? <snort>
[14:28]	Turtle thinks Saijanai is full of himself
[14:28]	Saijanai Kuhn:	shut up turtle
[14:28]	Turtle: Don't tell me to shut up.
[14:28]	Wyn Galbraith snorts.
[14:28]	Rob Linden:	it's something that a potential volunteer might not think would be appreciated all that much, but we would be soooo grateful
[14:29]	Wyn Galbraith:	Hello Blue!
[14:29]	Blue Linden:	hi guys :)
[14:29]	Rob Linden:	Hi Blue....welcome!
[14:29]	Wyn Galbraith:	Roads Blue, Roads!
[14:29]	Rob Linden:	Hi Nurgle, too
[14:29]	Rob Linden:	and everyone :)
[14:29]	Blue Linden:	this is definitely the place to be :)
[14:29]	Wyn Galbraith even has a hardhat not ;)
[14:29]	Wyn Galbraith:	hinthint
[14:30]	Jansen Miles:	Damn English. It really should be formalized into proper Backus–Naur form.
[14:30]	Wyn Galbraith:	Wow, Nurgle. Like your av.
[14:30]	Wyn Galbraith:	*not=now
[14:30]	Saijanai Kuhn:	Backus-Naur-Painnini form, thankyourverymuch
[14:30]	Blue Linden:	hehe me too....some of the best avs come from Teen Grid :)
[14:30]	Rob Linden:	so, back on the topic: I've talked to so many Linden Lab employees, who want to communicate more on sldev@, but the word "overwhelming" comes up so often
[14:31]	Wyn Galbraith:	I think that's why I've sort of ignored it lately.
[14:31]	Wyn Galbraith:	So I can see why you're looking for a cat herder
[14:31]	Rob Linden:	if you think about just how busy we are just trying to keep things up and running, and then think about a high volume list like sldev@, you can see where that would be the first thing on the cut list
[14:32]	Soft Linden:	Just to kinda stress the importance of it, too - the more on-topic traffic is, the more useful it is to Lindens and residents both. Improving the list positively impacts *everyone* who's got their hands on the code. If it saves 100 devs 5 minutes a day... boom, you've added a whole extra full-time programmer.
[14:33]	Rob Linden:	I think everyone at Linden Lab is very interested in having strong bonds with the community, but I think more structured communication is really where it needs to manifest itself
[14:33]	Wyn Galbraith nods and is taking notes. Need gloves, warm wool...
[14:33]	Blue Linden:	more communication is always good
[14:33]	Saijanai Kuhn:	packing an extra thermos. Tea, or coffee, Wyn?
[14:34]	Wyn Galbraith:	Both, thanks Saijanai, I'll bring bagles and creamcheese.
[14:34]	Squirrel Wood:	More communication is good. Proper communication is better ^^
[14:34]	Rob Linden:	that's an excellent observation, Soft. we have over 500 subscribers ont he mailing list
[14:34]	Wyn Galbraith:	*bagels.
[14:35]	Saijanai Kuhn:	boggles...
[14:35]	Soft Linden:	Hey Dale :)
[14:35]	Blue Linden:	Hi Dale :)
[14:35]	Mad Cat (grey) Head whispers: Use Mouselook (press 'M') to start hwarfing.
[14:35]	Jansen Miles:	Hi Dale.
[14:35]	Dale Glass:	hiya :-)
[14:35]	Wyn Galbraith:	Uhoh is this the first cat to herd?
[14:35]	Rob Linden:	:)
[14:35]	Rob Linden:	we were just talking about cat herding
[14:35]	Mad Cat (grey) Head whispers: Use Mouselook (press 'M') to start hwarfing.
[14:35]	Saijanai Kuhn:	is he wife-hunting cat? THought those were white
[14:35]	Blue Linden:	*gulp*
[14:35]	Wyn Galbraith:	And Blue shows up.
[14:36]	Rob Linden:	by the way, I'm planning to post the transcript of this. any objections?
[14:36]	Gershom Taov:	Another thing that might help is making sure the subject of the post matches the content. Sometimes the content changes but the subject doesn't.
[14:36]	Rob Linden:	I need to put up a sign so that people know up front about that
[14:36]	Wyn Galbraith:	Ok.
[14:37]	Saijanai Kuhn:	clock unmerge
[14:37]	Saijanai Kuhn:	clock merge
[14:37]	Rob Linden:	you can IM me privately if you object
[14:37]	Rob Linden:	...or want to discuss
[14:37]	Saijanai Kuhn:	I asume that all LInen office hours are public cause they say they are...
[14:38]	Wyn Galbraith:	The Linen office is down the hall Saijanai
[14:38]	Saijanai Kuhn:	linden* even
[14:38]	Dale Glass:	hmm, quiet today. What did I miss?
[14:38]	Wyn Galbraith starts a new business, Linden Linens ;)
[14:38]	Rob Linden:	yeah...I realized that as people were casually volunteering to try stuff on sldev, that they may not have thought about the transcript
[14:38]	Saijanai Kuhn:	Wyn has agreed to become a cat herder
[14:39]	Saijanai Kuhn:	I'm carrying the bells
[14:39]	Wyn Galbraith:	LOL
[14:39]	Soft Linden grins
[14:39]	Wyn Galbraith wonders what she's getting herself into.
[14:39]	Turtle thinks that is way beyond full of it
[14:39]	Rob Linden:	I'm calling on volunteers to help figure out how to make sldev@ less overwhelming
[14:39]	Wyn Galbraith:	Ask to do roads and get cats, well that's a jump ;)
[14:40]	Soft Linden:	They're offering to help point some of the more overwhelming traffic toward JIRAs or the wiki when appropriate, give a nudge when topics drift away from the subject line and the likes. Trying to help make sldev more useful still.
[14:40]	Rob Linden:	if we can make it a better investment of time, more Lindens will participate. if more Lindens participate, it should be a better use of time for everyone else
[14:40]	Jansen Miles:	Your offer to do work on sldev has been tacitly approved by the infinite permanence of the Internet.
[14:40]	Squirrel Wood:	heh.. if I got roads I'd just plaster them with trees. Me being a squirrel and all that.. :p
[14:40]	Wyn Galbraith:	If I do well maybe I can do roads as a reward. LOL
[14:41]	Dale Glass:	how's voice for Linux going?
[14:41]	Rob Linden:	since a lot of people are volunteering to do stuff, I want to also make sure it's as fun as possible
[14:42]	Wyn Galbraith:	Fun?
[14:42]	Rob Linden:	plugging along. I know Tofu has started in earnest, but I don't think he knows when he'll end in earnest :)
[14:42]	Dale Glass:	hmm, then it's LL who has to finish things?
[14:43]	Rob Linden:	sure.....fun. I'm getting paid, and I still wouldn't do this if it wasn't fun
[14:43]	Dale Glass:	I thought the viewer part of it was done. Or at least it works with my wine hack
[14:43]	Wyn Galbraith:	The importance of being ernest.
[14:43]	Rob Linden:	Dale: it's a long story
[14:44]	Wyn Galbraith:	Well it is certainly a way to get my feet wet.
[14:45]	Soft Linden:	I gotta catch up on that myself. I know tofu's been doing good work on other Linux media stuff - am excited to hear about involvement in Linux voice :)
[14:45]	Rob Linden:	Tofu is kinda "the closer" on just about any Linux project....doesn't mean taht it wasn't started before him
[14:45]	Dale Glass:	But I mean
[14:46]	Dale Glass:	I've looked at the code a bit. It seems to be there. And works with the wine hack, so the Linux viewer does seem to have the needed code
[14:46]	Dale Glass:	so what's missing?
[14:46]	Rob Linden:	I'm not sure. it could be that Tofu will be done before we know it
[14:46]	Squirrel Wood:	the linux part of slvoice.exe ?
[14:47]	Rob Linden:	I don't want to speculate, though
[14:47]	Soft Linden:	Tofu's in my group - can ping him for input and see if he's ready to announce anything
[14:47]	Dale Glass:	I thought slvoice.exe was something made by vivox
[14:47]	Saijanai Kuhn:	Taking a monent to plug my favorite jira... https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/WEB-153
[14:47]	Rob Linden:	it is
[14:49]	Rob Linden:	re: scripting top level jira project. I think I'm convinced that we should do it, but I've got a lot of other stuff in the queue before that
[14:50]	Wyn Galbraith:	What's sort of stuff, or is that company private?
[14:51]	Rob Linden:	well, I need to work with the vendor running jira to get the final pieces in place to make email from jira work
[14:51]	Rob Linden:	...as an example
[14:51]	Soft Linden:	Which is something we'd really like to have. Would help a lot if people could subscribe to updates on issues so they know when to come back with new information or test results.
[14:52]	Wyn Galbraith:	Good point.
[14:53]	Wyn Galbraith:	Working with vendors can be both a joy and a pain.
[14:53]	Wyn Galbraith use to work with printer vendors when building drivers in the old DOS days.
[14:53]	Rob Linden:	I'm not going to complain. they were very good sports about the snafu yesterday
[14:53]	Blue Linden:	have to run..take care all :)
[14:53]	Squirrel Wood:	cyas ^^
[14:54]	Rob Linden:	bye Blue
[14:54]	Wyn Galbraith:	Bye Blue bye Roads!
[14:54]	Rob Linden:	we should start thinking about wrapping up
[14:54]	Wyn Galbraith:	Buy bonds too.
[14:54]	Rob Linden:	anything else for the last 5 min?
[14:54]	Liana Linden:	For those of you who weren't here at the beginning--
[14:55]	Liana Linden:	we're having an in-world gathering to listen to Rob announce the Hippo Award winners.
[14:55]	Liana Linden:	That's Saturday at 8am PDT/SLT.
[14:55]	Liana Linden:	f you'd like to join us, let me know and I'll put you on the event group list.
[14:55]	Liana Linden:	Cory will be speaking as well.
[14:56]	Liana Linden:	Hippo Awards = Linden Lab Innovation Awards. :-)
[14:56]	Saijanai Kuhn:	coolio
[14:57]	Saijanai Kuhn:	trying new word. Did I use it correctly?
[14:57]	Rob Linden:	ok....well, I think we can probably wrap up
[14:57]	Rob Linden:	Saijanai ....sure!
[14:57]	Wyn Galbraith:	Saturday, might be a hard day for me, we're suppose to go out kite flying.
[14:57]	Rob Linden:	thanks everyone for coming!
[14:57]	Soft Linden:	Thank y'all for coming. :)
[14:57]	Wyn Galbraith might compete, so needs practice.
[14:57]	Squirrel Wood:	Make sure you blog about it :)
[14:57]	Rob Linden:	this is really great....looking forward to seeing you all on sldev@ !
[14:58]	Wyn Galbraith:	Thanks for having the meeting and thanks for all the cats.
[14:58]	Wyn Galbraith ponders if she's in shock/laugh