compiz - Jan 2009 - Minutes of the Compiz Conference Call, 2009-01-28

Greetings !

Here are the minutes of today's Compiz Conference Call.
The next one will take place next week, time and date aren't frozen yet,
we'll
keep you up to date about this.

Feel free to comment and stack new questions for next week.

Regards,
Guillaume

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

Conference Call 2009-01-28

Discussing the issues
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jeff : Two core issues [break]
Kristian : The code not the problem  : the issue is about some people unable to
work with others
Jeff : code is the issue because of the various branches, not knowing where we
are going, what things will happen
---------
Agreement : this is indeed a real communication problem from some of us
---------

Deflection about conference calls
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Availability : Dennis can't participate this time, Kristian is taking from
his
work time
Jeff's proposal : Digress / minutes could solve this
---------
Agreement : one or two more calls, then mailing lists [hopefully]
---------

Back to the communication problems
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
David agrees that a large part of the problem is his ; we don't have a
working
leadership and maintenance, he can't spend all his time on maintaining
compiz
----------
Conclusion : we need for a structure, someone, or a group, must be in charge
             of maintaining Compiz on a daily basis
----------

Exploring ways of leadership
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
 * Single project leader [like Linus], lead coder, strong community leader
 * Leadership team : represents the major contributors, similar to the Beryl
   way : leadership team (Quinn, Dennis, Danny, DBO)

Back again to the core issues
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Problem : ever waiting for the NEXT BIG THING
-------
=> problem with branches (no ETA, no merging strategy, no public (or private)
plan) ; they CAN'T be ignored : they are major changes, which might
completely
change the future of compiz if they get merged, they may mean a full rewrite or
even just a full check-everything, so that they usually freeze the surrounding
development effort for weeks or months, with other developers waiting in doubt

Problem with documentation : there's almost none
--------------------------
David states he doesn't expect other people to read his code
BUT people might want to look at it, understand it, help David with it : this
is open source
==> undocumented code dumps are impossible to handle for others

Furthermore, while you can often understand the code, you may not know why it is
done like this or why it is even doing what its doing

Statement : general documentation can be produced by other devs, but the
trickiest bits need documentation and explanation straight from their authors

Summary of this section : we need more recurrent commits/pushes, and tricky code
-----------------------   must be documented

The decision of the day
-----------------------
Starting from today comes into action a new committee, which will use a
public, open (yet moderated to non-committee people) mailing list for decision
taking.
Those who reply on time will be those who are taken into account in this
decision taking problem (deadline-definition is one of the first topics to
discuss).
Once that deadline has been reached and the decision actually been made, it will
be published outside of the decision taking-specific mailing list.

David doesn't mind if he isn't in that council, it could take too much
of his
time.

The new council (tentatively) is, should they accept it :
    * Dennis "onestone" Kasprzyk
    * Danny "maniac" Baumann
    * Kristian "KristianL" Lyngst?l
    * Erkin "cornelius" Bahceci
    * Sam "SmSpillaz" Spilsbury
    * Guillaume "iXce" Seguin

Next meeting
------------
 * Dennis will (hopefully) talk about compiz++ and it's architecture, why it
was
   done etc
 * Our place in the future (with GNOME-Shell making moves that might send Compiz
   to the background of the scene and KDE4's KWin becoming 'Good
enough' for
   most people)
 * Final wrap-up of NOMAD things, whether we can get it merged into compiz++
 * Decision on whether we will have further calls / IRC meetings
 
The team will see if we can get a listen-in stream for further calls if you want
to keep up to date. We will do this over Stickam or Qik if possible.
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