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

["Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr" <midryder@duce.net>]

'Ello all - I'm going to do this a little odd.  See, Spence is writing an
article on the Alliance and Freedows split - a rather nice idea, I think.
Spence is handling this in a good way - he's emailing both groups, and
getting information directly from the PR guys.  Ya'll know my opinion -
I'm just a stuffed shirt for this project.  So, I'm going to answer all of
the question, then all of you take a look, and see if your opinions vary
from mine on where we are at, etc.  I'd rather he get good solid
information from the developers instead o' the project spin doctor <GRIN>

Guess you could call this "Open Source Public Relations" <GRIN>

----- Original Message -----
From: Spence Nichol <disc_druid@yahoo.com>
To: <midryder@intcon.net>
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 1999 7:57 PM
Subject: Freedows/Alliance Split: One Year Later


> Hi...
>
> Since we've already talked about the Freedows/Alliance one year later
> thingy on Icq, I won't bother with all the preliminaries I did with
> Freedows.
>
> I would appreciate you taking your time to answer the following
> questions in as much detail as you would like. Some of these questions
> are certainly answered on project web sites, however I prefer going
> straight to the horses mouth. I will pull "sound bites" and quotes out
> of your answers as I feel necessary.

That's great.  I don't know about Freedows, but, with Alliance the web
page is always slightly behind the times - information takes time to
trickle into it, as the developers have to take time out to tell us all
thier status.

> *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!!!

> *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CK:  The specs are horribly outdated the last time I checked.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.

> Where can the specifications and code be found?

On CSV.  Where?  Ummm.... I don't have the addy for the CSV off hand right
now.  However, it's uploaded daily to FTP:
ftp://ftp.allos.org/pub/allos/trees/daily/

> *What development model is Alliance currently using?

You know, I'm not sure how it's classified at the moment <GRIN>

> *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.

> *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.

> *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.

> *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?

I think it's possible.  Will is happen?  Unknown.  If it does, it won't be
a core part of the Alliance OS distributions.

There's alot to be learned from WINE - both positive and negative.  WINE
is getting more and more robust as time moves along.  I'm sure the
original people who came up with the idea and said 'lets do it' already
see tons of areas that they could have saved a lot of time by doing this,
or things would have been easier this way, etc.  So, if someone were to
start Windows on Alliance, then they have a damned good reference for the
API's,. and also a good idea how to do it just a little nicer from the
begining.  Don't take that as a slam against - WINE.  It isn't.

> *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.

> *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.

> *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.

> *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.

> 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.  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>

> Disc Druid
> disc_druid@yahoo.com

Midnight Ryder
Aka Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr
Ambassador for Alliance
....Did I mention I love red heads?


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