Mallard: Collaborate or Not?

[Matthew East]

Thomas,

There are a few misunderstandings in your email that I'm going to try
to put straight. I'm not hopeful that you'll agree with any of my
points, but I want to make them anyway because I feel that it's
important that you at least see that we are trying to address your
concerns.

First, there is no strong-arming here. The team has been discussing
this important issue in a perfectly rational and constructive way both
on the mailing list and at the last meeting. The broad consensus has
been *against* implementing Mallard in this release and continuing to
evaluate it going forward.

Second, the idea of beta-testing Mallard has not been rejected. In
fact, it has been expressly approved at our last meeting - as my
summary of the meeting states: "the team to play around with a Mallard
testing branch to test scalability and migration; kubuntu-docs to
discuss with Shaun in Chicago possibility of KDE migration; general
liaising with upstream and continued reevaluation with a view to
possible migration in lucid+1 or whenever ready ... as part of testing
Mallard, a spec to be drafted setting out the team needs from syntax"
[1]. What that means is that we will give Mallard some testing to see
whether it is suitable for our needs.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MeetingLogs/DocTeam/January2010

Third, the "community opinion" isn't against migrating to Mallard. You
are the only person who has come out flat against ever moving to
Mallard. Kyle has raised a few points to take into account, all of
which have been listened to, one of which has been raised upstream
already, and the rest of which I'm sure will find their way into the
relevant spec to be prepared while testing Mallard. Most others,
myself included, have identified potential issues that we'll continue
to evaluate and discuss. The process of constant feedback will
continue.

One important thing to take into account when you are trying to
evaluate what the "community opinion" is on any point is that Ubuntu
is a meritocracy [2]. That means that when evaluating what the
consensus of a particular team is on a particular issue, the views of
the people who are actually doing the work tend to get given greater
weight. That is no different in our group. So while we will listen to
the opinions and constructive criticism of others on the mailing list,
and we will seek to respond to and address concerns that are raised
regardless of who raises them, in the end it will be the views of the
core contributors that will tend to carry greater weight. That's not
intended to devalue the views of others, it's just how this community
works.

[2] http://www.ubuntu.com/community/processes/governance

Fourth, Mallard's development has nothing to do with personal ego.
What *all* of us have in the forefront of our minds when discussing
this issue is how to provide the best help we can to our users.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF