Re: [Gnumed-devel] what happened to the GNUmed developers ?

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Mon, Nov 27, 2006 at 08:35:10AM +1100, Richard wrote:

> Yeah, well, they all dropped out because of the fact that
That is your interpretation of ...

> because karsten  keeps such a iron hand on things,
... your perception.

No one else has ever raised such concerns (to my knowledge).
I encourage anyone to speak up and lend some credibility to
Richards ongoing claim. Even more would I like to hear
advice on how to achieve better results.

> he is the only member of the team.
Which isn't true either. Were it true GNUmed would have been
unable to have the second release in Debian Etch today,
pending a third one real soon now.

> IE, as I've crapped on about ad-nauseum, gnumed dosn't operate as a team of 
> developers - people come, people leave once they realise that their idea's 
> are not going to be implemented.
          ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                  That's the crux, notice the Passive Voice ?

Let's assume there is one person writing code and 5 persons
throwing about smart ideas (even if the one coder agrees
those are great ideas). What do you think will happen ?

It is very likely that:

a) visible progress in terms of running code is slow
b) 5 people slowly become upset about "their ideas not getting implemented"
c) one person is overworked due to getting bashed for not
   implementing what the others think should be implemented all
   the while feeling like working on the things they suggest

> We have had some much diverse talent drop away.
Very true. We happen to disagree on the reasons. I do not
claim to know the reasons. I have suspicions but I don't
claim them as truths.

> Gnumed will only move forward when those who really want to contribute fill 
> defined niches according to their skills.
Wow. You tell the truth: "... fill defined niches ...".
Notice the active rather than passive tense (vocabulary?) in
here ? When people actually did actively fill their niche
GNUmed did accelerate in moving forward:

- Horst bootstrapped the initial code
- Ian bootstrapped some more code such as the initial phrasewheel and the 
resizing soap
- Jim bootstrapped the creation of significant useful content on the Wiki
- Andreas bootstrapped installable Debian packages
- Sebastian bootstrapped non-Debian packages and a bit of PR
- Hilmar bootstrapped a working configuration plugin
- Richard bootstrapped a UI description that is still useful today
- Carlos bootstrapped the demographics input/editing (which now consolidated)

Unfortunately, the majority of those people stopped
contributing after bootstrapping their niche. And GNUmed
slowed down again. My own contribution in this is rather
small. Regardless, I am thankful to them for having
contributed what they did.

None of the above people has ever heard anything remotely
like "your help isn't wanted, go away" but rather quite to
the contrary which, I am sure, every single one will be
happy to acknowledge (I can be proven wrong here easily -
please do go ahead and make the poll !)

Regards,
Karsten
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