Subject: Volunteer in transforming GnuWin32 into a Linux-like success
From: [email-masked] (Tomas Fasth)

14 Feb 1998 12:00:45 -0800
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To: [email-masked]
Cc: Mumit Khan <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]

Although the refinement of the gnuwin32 environment could gain speed
considerably by adopting the "bazaar" model; I think we all can agree on
that it will not be done by itself. An initiative towards such a
development model for gnuwin32 depends more or less on whether Geoffrey
Noer and Cygnus Solutions want this to happen or not.

As indicated by Geoffrey's posting some days ago:
> BTW, I'm very nearly finished with b19 technical changes (although
> there are a few items left to do).  Pretty soon it'll be down to the
> details like getting the installer and documentation together...  So,
> replacing the header files is not something that's going to happen
> in b19.
> 
> My current plan is for b20 to include egcs, integrated mingw
> libraries, and new Win32 API headers.

Being written in singular form, conscious or unconscious, seem to be one 
clear indicator to where at least part of the problem can be found. As
long as the comunity in large is kept outside the development process an
increase in speed of implementation and improvement are probably not
going to happen.

Please note that I'm not criticizing either Geoffrey or Cygnus for how
things are done today. They have their full right to continue as before
and we will all continue to be grateful for their contribution to this
comunity.

However, indicated by the frequent postings to this list, Geoffrey and
Cygnus have an oppertunity here to cook while the stove is hot. Meaning,
beginning to engage people on this list in a collaborative development
which can result in a much faster turnaround by start delegate pieces of
work among volunteers.

The key capability here is to gain quality by coordination and
delegation. I think the success of Linux is essentially thanks to Linus
Torvalds ability to coordinate the whole project with a fair amount of
discipline and common sense. And may be also due to an ability to
balance the need for detailed scrutiny with the need of an overall
conceptual vision.

Now, gnuwin32 is not Linux (yes, it's true!), but it have enough of
similarity in appearence for us to consider a similar model of
delegation.
The most crucial piece of work is of course cygwin.dll (gnuwin.dll in
the future?). Because it's crucial, it need a "kernel" master like
Geoffrey to coordinate it's engineering.
But most of the other stuff today handled by Geoffrey could very well be
delegated to other volunteers, like the package installer,
documentation, header file replacements, and so on.

By the way, talking about package installer, someone mentioned the KDE
development efford. Like in KDE (and in all the different kinds of Linux
distributions), it seem to be a good idea to divide the distribution in
several components, one for core features, others for different kinds of
tools and applications.

Using the redhat or debian package tool to install the majority of the
tools and applications today part (or not part) of the gnuwin32
distribution might be a good idea, leaving only the core files (and the
package tool) to be installed the win32 way.

But as said many times before on this list, nothing comes for free. So,
to be able to make this happen, we need a lot of volunteers to do the
hard work, and a handful of respected persons, like Geoffrey, to
volunteer in coordinating the whole thing. And, most important of all,
someone have to take the initiative and lead the way.

Since I have raised to speak you might think I should also take the
first step. Sadly enough, I don't have neither the capability nor the
capacity (being deeply involved in other projects) to do that. Sorry. I
only hope my words can inspire other persons on this list to act. I am
though prepared to do my share by volunteering in a smaller part of such
an efford.

Tomas
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