GnuCash Dev teams

[Jeff Warnica]

Replying, also not as a dev, but a mostly lurker on the list.

The issue with OSS projects is that while some project level
vision/strategy/goals/direction is very helpful (and I think GNUCash could
improve on), on the day-to-day level, developers pick and choose based on
their own personal preference. Near the end of a release cycle, developers
may tend towards "bugfixes" as opposed to "new features", it is also the
case that some developers may only ever work on new features, and others may
only ever work on bugfixes/refactoring/stabilization.

I think that it is the industry trend (or one trend) towards no specific
stabilization/bugfix cycle. Scrum, agile, XP type would say that software
should always be in a releaseable state. Which isn't true on
a tactical level, of course, but if it was once standard practice that from
saying "go" to "released" taking 6+ months, under Scrum you are never more
then a week or two from release. In OSS projects, the Linux kernel is of
course the biggest project, and filled with case study material in PMing;
forcing developers to "fix bugs" instead of "building new features", at
least on the project level, is pretty much impossible. With Linux, its split
up by time as opposed to role, but during the stabilization phase, people
working on new features continue to do so, they just don't tell you until
the new feature phase.

The recent discussion here on how and when to branch out trunk vs 2.4
highlights some of the issues local to this group.

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 11:32 AM, Sebastien Daniel <
sebastien.daniel at sebweb.ca> wrote:

> Hello to all Devs.
>
> I recently joined the GnuCash -devel list, hoping I could contribute in
> some manner.
>
> The experience I can give is related to business management, accounting and
> my academics, which are in the field of business administration and
> information technologies.
> As a note, I am by no means a developper, I only know html/CSS (for now).
>
> This is also my first shot at contributing in an opensource project, so my
> methods might not be the most appreciated, if so, simply point it out
> (nicely pls :P ) and i'll adapt.
>
> My first contribution would be to attempt a certain form of organisation,
> this being on a voluntary basis, everyone should make their own decision on
> which "team" they would want to be.
>
> *The idea:
> *Have two teams, each contributing in a different manner.
> Team A would work on known issues, bugs and stability.
> Team B would work on fonctionnality requests, general GnuCash improvement.
>
> I believe this would help drive GnuCash efforts all in the same direction
> (in sorts).
> This is an idea, please give your feedback.
>
> /
> Askarii/
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