Re: [alliance] Fw: Freedows/Alliance Split: One Year Later

[Ramon van Handel <vhandel@chem.vu.nl>]

> > > > *What progress has Alliance made in the past year?
> > >
> > > Yeeks.  Where to start?!  Tell ya what - I'm going to leave this one to
> > > the developers to answer!!!

Pretty soon after the split last year (a month or two, I think) we
started coding the CK.  This started out with a prototype scheduler
and kinda grew from there.  The CK was coded mostly by two people,
Jens and myself.  For a while we didn't have time so development
halted, but now it's coming along nicely again.  The CK is not yet
completely ready in order to support the rest of the system, but
I think that'll be a matter of another month, or perhaps two (but
don't take me too literally, it always takes longer than I initially
hope ;)).

Other parts of the system that were coded:  the IOSK has a prototype
running under linux, written by Daniel and Stefano.  They abandoned
work on this because the linux environment is too different from
the CK in order to go further than that, so we're really waiting
for a more solid base system.

SORB also had some prototype work written by Luc, though most of
it is very old IIRC.

Recently (in the last month), I've been putting a lot of work into
the ABL (boot system), including integrating the GRUB bootloader
into our source tree in such a way that we can shared device
drivers between GRUB and the ABL.

All of the other areas (am I not forgetting any ?) don't have
any code, but have had periodical discussions going on, and
possibly some specification.

Of course, we're always short of developers :)  It is my
personal hope that once we have a working prototype core
system with the CK and a few kernels and applications,
that more coders will be attracted to the project.

> > > > *Is Alliance still at the specification stage or is there actually
> > > > code?
> > >
> > > Both.  Since the project spans more than one area (CK, SK's, GUI, etc.)
> > > each area is in different shape.
> > >
> > > CK:  The specs are horribly outdated the last time I checked.  There's
> > > a good amount of code here, some demo tasks, etc.  But, for the most part,
> > > the specs are written after the code.

The current specs are awefully out of date.  I'm not writing any specs
until I feel that the CK design is stable.  We've abandoned writing
CK specs when we noticed that the code evolved faster than the specs
anyway.

> > > > Where can the specifications and code be found?
> > >
> > > On CSV.

No, on CVS :)

> > > > *What development model is Alliance currently using?
> > >
> > > You know, I'm not sure how it's classified at the moment <GRIN>

Open.  To develop alliance, join the lists, pick something that you
like and start working on it.

> > > > *When do you expect a final release?
> > >
> > > Final release?  Is there such a thing?  There will always be a million and
> > > one various things that will be added, etc., just like Linux.  It's never
> > > quite done.

We're better off first working towards a working prototype :)

> > > > *What features does Alliance currently plan to include in the first
> > > > release?
> > >
> > > A complete list?  And how detailed?  I'll leave THIS up to the developers
> > > to answer - they know better than me what's going to constitute a 'first
> > > release' version of Alliance.

What do you call a release ?  A "stable release" ?  I don't think
anybody
is thinking about that yet.  By the time alliance is ready for an
end-user
release, we'll probably just include whatever we have at the time :)

> > > > *How many people are currently working on the project?
> > >
> > > Right now, there are 25 people in the Alliance directory - I THINK that's
> > > everyone.1
> > >
> > > >In what capacities?
> > >
> > > We have very few 'support' personell in Alliance.  One person maintains
> > > the FAQ and a few other things.  There's myself, the PR guy.  Daryl
> > > Borth heads up the web site.  There's annother person who works with Daryl.
> > > J Wynia is User Ed.  Lloyd Duhon is the project lead.  As for everyone
> > > else - well, most of them have 'teams' they list them selves as being
> > > on, like "Network SK" or "Cache Kernel'  However, it really doesn't work
> > > that way - pretty much everyone put thier noses in everyone's part of the
> > > project, pitches in ideas, code, whatever is needed.  There's also one
> > > or two people who are on vacation at the moment.

There are very few actually coding people (three at the moment, I
think.)
I think they're mostly waiting for a decent CK and SORB.  That's fair,
because that's really the foundation of the system.

> > > > *Do you think creating an emulation of Windows by the project or some
> > > > outside party for the Alliance CK is really likely considering the
> > > > difficulties WINE is having?

Creating a windows emulation is not within the goals of this project.
Technically, I believe it would be possible if you have access to
all the (undocumented) APIs of windows, which, of course, you don't.
I'm not quite clear on what difficulties WINE is having... could you
explain ?

A port of WINE should be feasible, in any case :)

> > > > *What is the current view of the project towards the other?
> > >
> > > Apathy?  Everyone wished them the best of luck a year ago, and the
> > > offer was there to cooperate, but, that never panned out.

There have been bad feelings floating around for a long time.
In the last few months, that seems to have quietened down though.
We don't really have anything to do anymore with freedows ---
I myself never talk to anybody from freedows anymore, or hear
anything from them.  It's probably for the best :)

> > > > *When Alliance split with Freedows, how many people actually left and
> > > > how many actually stayed, not counting those who had signed up for
> > > > the project but had not received a position?
> > >
> > > Only a handful of people left Freedows - all but two of those were
> > > developers.  Grand total, probably 20 people.

As a matter of fact, I don't remember that any developer stayed behind.
All developers left, and freedows was left with their 500 beta testers
:)

> > > > *How did the events that lead up to the Freedows/Alliance split
> > > > affect the organization of Alliance?
> > >
> > > Alliance is a VERY loose, self managing group.  Completely different
> > > from when the developers were with Freedows, which was a rather structured
> > > group.  It's rare to see Lloyd say much on the lists in the capacity of
> > > the group leader - it's just unnessisary.

I'm not even clear on what Lloyd's job is -- I think that his job
is to resolve any serious arguments if they come up.  Well, they
haven't :)

> > > > *Has the last year been a smooth one for Alliance, all things
> > > > considered?
> > >
> > > All things considered?  VERY smooth, with the exception of the usual
> > > little bumps that happens during development like this - people taking
> > > vacation from time to time, etc.

It didn't go as fast as I've expected.  For myself, there have
been periods when I simply didn't have time to spend on alliance.
All things considered, though, I think we did pretty okay.  I
hope that once the CK and SORB are in a more advanced stage
that many more people can start actively coding, which'll mean
a lot faster progress.

> > > > Anything else you want to add? Feel free.
> > > > Thanks for your time.
> > >
> > > Thanks for the opportunity to say our piece about it, Spence!  It's
> > > very much appreciated.

Same here.

PS, I don't know how much time you're planning to spend on researching
the groups -- but I suggest you have a look at the mailing list archives
for each group.  You can find ours at
http://mail.nl.linux.org/lists/
(all the lists starting with 'alliance' :))
As far as I know, all freedows lists are still at www.egroups.com...
ask them.

> > > Now, I really have to cut this short - I will most
> > > certainly have a couple things I'd like to add later, but, I've got
> > > this red head girl friend who's doing everything in her power to make
> > > sure I get off the computer as soon as possible! <GRIN>

Eww, Davis, I'm so jealous :-P

Ramon
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