Re: Arabic And Islamic Books

[Etienne M. Gagnon]

Hi Brian,

On Wed, Sep 05, 2001 at 10:42:56PM -0400, Brian Jones wrote:
> Are you just ignoring my email saying that there has been zippo
> response to my requests to obtain the freakin' password so I can do
> this (address@hidden)?  Apparently.  You want to complain,
> feel free, but you're not helping anyone.

I am not ignoring your messages.  You've been looking into that matter
for months and months, now.  [Don't ask me to seach the mailing-list
archive, and my personal archives for traces of our first exchanges on
this matter;  you know it's been probably more than a year since then].

I think it is unfair to "tag me" as a complainer; I am simply seeking an
effective solution to the problem at hand.  I do not want to try to infer
conclusions out of your lack of results into solving this problems in
so long a time period.  Why, because you are a volunteer, with little
time, probably best spent writing code.

The issue just becomes one of "leadership".  I think the Classpath project
is getting into a state where it needs "active leadership", which is
something that requires time out of the "volunteer leaders" to (1) seek
solutions to minor problems, (2) conduct surveys on more difficult subjects,
(3) propose solutions for these various problems, etc.

I am not denying that Classpath has been tremendously improving over the
last year.  In fact, the current situation is the result of these
improvements.  The "current situation" can be stated into that an increasing
number of emerging VMs are using Classpath, and thus an increasing number
of people are subscribing to the mailing-list, which is the primary
communication channel for the community.  This prompts new imperatives:
(1) Classpath needs to break its build/test/implementation dependency on
Japhar and on the JDK, (2) a reorganization of the code repository to
simplify the build under various environments is needed, (3) Classpath
should accommodate various native implementations (JNI/CNI comes to
mind), (4) the growing Classpath community needs democracy and transparency
in its leadership, (5) the community needs noise-free communication channel,
and finally, (5) the community needs leaders with some time on their
hands to deal with (a) administrative tasks/issues, and (b) diplomatic
issues (licensing, copyright ownership, etc.).

I could shut up, and simply make my work in my little corner on Sablepath,
leaving the Classpath community to itself.  Instead, I am offering to
contribute ideas and time to the project.  I think that simple technical
tricks can diminish tensions between different groups using and/or
contributing to classpath for various objectives.

For example, another user, in the past few hours, metioned the "Ant" tool.
This is a very nice Free "build tool" designed specifically for Java.  I
definitely think that the Classpath build process could be dramatically
simplified by providing an "Ant" build process for the Java source files.

The native tensions/issues could be resolved by splitting the archive into
one package/module for Java sources, and another package/module for each
native implementation: 1 for standard (strict ISO C, Posix) JNI, 1 for CNI,
1 for ORP native implementation, 1 for C/C++/nspr based JNI implementation,
etc.

I really think that leadership amounts to more than "owning administrative
privileges on subversions.gnu.org".  It is something that requires time
and involvement at multiple levels, including transparent and open discussions
on the main communication channel, avoiding private channels as much as
possible for matters that affect the community as a whole.  This is a delicate
task, and best managed, in a relatively grown up project, by a "steering
commity" and some form of democracy, so that project members can decide to
keep or change their leaders based on their record track.  Am I volunteering
for such a "steering committee"?  Yes, because I do have some time to dedicate
to administrative and diplomatic issues, as well as many ideas to contribute
at the technical levels.

-------------------

Getting back to our SPAM issue.

Arenn offered to help.  Please do not blame him.  Instead, you should encourage
him, as he seems to know who to contact at the FSF to get this issue resolved.

Regards.

Etienne
PS:  I do not have a working spell checker in my mailing softwares.  Please
forgive my spelling mistakes.
-- 
Etienne M. Gagnon                    http://www.info.uqam.ca/~egagnon/
SableVM:                                       http://www.sablevm.org/
SableCC:                                       http://www.sablecc.org/