RE: [Flightgear-devel] SourceForge Sourceforge policy against rep ly to munging

[Jim W. <ji...@ke...>]

"BERNDT, JON S. (JON) (JSC-EX) (LM)" <jon...@js...> said:

> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Curtis L. Olson [mailto:cu...@fl...]
> > Cc: Marc MERLIN; Alex Perry; fli...@li...;
> > 
> > From my view of the world, most people seem to expect mailing lists to
> 
> > "replytomungingconsideredharmful" page.  After my experiment, I went
> > back and reread the page in question and determined (from my view of
> > the world) it was 85% B.S. and not written nearly as objectively as it
> > first appeared.
> 
> > Either way, if our mailing lists were going to be reconfigured out
> > from under us, a warning would have been appreciated.
> 
> I stand with you 100% on this. I posted a bug report to sourceforge because
> of this, because in my mind it is a bug. It makes me wonder just what the
> sourceforge developers do in their lists. I wonder if they use the lists at
> all, because if they did they should realize how much of a pain in the ass
> it is to have to work with this the way it now functions.
> 
> It is an impediment to communication.
> 

The term to describe this situation is BOFH.  While there may be good 
arguments against "munging" as an undesirable "option",  I have yet to hear
one against letting project admins configure it as they see fit.  The 
constancy argument falls short when considering the variety ways that the 
other services can be configured.  Maybe sourceforge should have a standard
web template system that everyone has to use???

FlightGear is maybe part of just 1% but it just so happens that other admins
have told me they wanted to mung reply to and couldn't.  And I'm not in
contact with very many project admins.  The FlightGear project is one of the
strongest application projects (and certainly the strongest flight sim
project) on sourceforge right now.  Does sourceforge aspire to become just a
stockpile of useless or abandoned ideas?

This isn't about a debate of whether or not munging is acceptable.  This issue
should be about about openness, flexibility, and options...power to the
user...something that sourceforge at least ought to stand for.  Nothing in the
RFCs *prohibits* munging...because in the end their designers are oriented
toward these values.  Instead this particular problem with sourceforge seems
to be about ego...and control.

Jim