Re: The already complicated (complex?) process for contributing.

[Giovanni Biscuolo <g@xelera.eu>]

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Hi Simon,

since I already replied you offline please forgive me for any
repetitions, but later I realized a better comment to your metaphore
(see below) could be useful to other people.

Simon Tournier <zimon.toutoune@gmail.com> writes:

[...]

> On a side note, documentation is very fine but I do not read (or
> study!?) the documentation of my oven, instead I am just cooking stuff
> for fun.

On a side note, I like your metaphores!

OK but in my view the GNU Guix project is not a personal kitchen but an
international food company [1], with a complex /distributed/ production
process involving tools (ovens, etc.) and recipes (code) ranging from
trivial to very complex; not to forget **legal requirements**, a
challenging supply chain management and a very _peculiar_ process called
"change integration management" from "customers" proposals.  Am I
exaggerating?

Now, given the above context is a valid analogy, is it a fair
expectation you can contribute to the company [1] with the food you cook
just for fun with your oven?

The food GNU Guix company [1] supplies is boostrappable and reproducible
binary code, largerly "baked" using third-party recipes, with a
progressively shrinking binary seed: yeah! :-D

Well, to be honest the food analogy does not fit very well: Guix
supplies /peculiar/ tools that users can use for a variety of
activities, ranging from cooking just for fun to complex infrastructures
management... and to effectively use /that/ tools users should better
study its documentation (ungrateful job the documentation writer!) ;-)

[...]

> If a project needs really lengthy documentation for just contributing,
> either it is a more-than-thousand contributors project, as the Linux
> kernel

I disagree this is a valid metric to measure the complexity of the
process called "change integration management", it could even be _one_
customer asking to change the recipe for his preferred cake.

> either something is wrong.  Maybe both. ;-)

...or maybe it's not "just" a project but a whole food compay [1].

Oh, oh, oh: wait!  Are we going into /that/ famous essay [2] and its
sequel [3] ?!? (very interesting readings!)

...OK, I surrender, unconditionally! :-D

Happy cooking! :-) Gio'


[1] with a very peculiar vision, mission and business model; but please
concede the analogy

[2] "On Management and the Maginot Line"
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/ar01s12.html

[3] "Project Structures and Ownership"
http://catb.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading/ar01s16.html



P.S.: on a side note, I think that part (all?) of the problems discussed
in [2] and [3] are rooted in the anthropological set of questions known
as «Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs»
https://davidgraeber.org/articles/on-the-phenomenon-of-bullshit-jobs-a-work-rant/

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures

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