Xen support without reinventing the wheel

[Matthew Palmer]

On Tue, Nov 08, 2005 at 07:14:54PM -0500, Eric S. Johansson wrote:
> Matthew Palmer wrote:
> >>I would suggest discussing this activity on a transient mailing list 
> >>(quicktopics.com which is run by a friend of mine comes to mind) so we 
> >>wouldn't annoy the people here.
> >
> >No, keep it here.  It's Ubuntu development, and the idea of a "transient"
> >mailing list just gives me the willies.  It takes a good couple of days to
> >get any sensible number of people subscribed, and momentum isn't something
> >you can just pause.  Also, MLs get good when they get wide-spread 
> >publicity,
> >and a transient list would have no permanence and hence no publicity.  
> >Also,
> >a major benefit of mailing lists is their archives; I'd imagine that a
> >transient list would have it's archives blotted after a while (and even if
> >they weren't, if the list itself is gone, then if the question isn't
> >answered in the archives, where do you go?).
> 
> nice theory but unfortunately my experience and practice shows that it 
> doesn't work quite like that.  In the beginning the IPCop developers 
> mailing list was nice and focused.  now it's almost as cluttered as the 
> users list and there is now a IPCop-Core list for people who have done 
> active development.

If your developers list is getting unacceptably noisy, the answer is to
(politely or otherwise) tell the noise to stop it.  It isn't to rack off to
another list (where, quite possibly, the noise will just follow).  But
clamping down on every off-topic message will kill the community, as you
can't hack together without socialising together to some degree.

> the thought behind the transient list was for expediting communications 
> between people actively doing development.  The end result of that 
> activity would be then publicized on the users list and non-developer 
> conversation would take place here.

I don't think that YAML is going to expedite communications necessarily --
all it's going to do is fragment communication amongst different lists.
If there is enough volume as to Xen-related chatter, then it might be worth
creating another list, but do it within the existing lists.ubuntu.com, so as
to maximise exposure.  Otherwise, the only way anyone is going to know that
there's anything going on is if they already know or are told explicitly --
which means they have to ask.  Not everybody will ask, so you've just lost
some of your potential developer pool.

> >>are we ready to move forward?
> >
> >To where?  My suggestion would be to look at the existing Debian stuff, and
> >if it is deficient in some area, identify the deficiency and work out some
> >way to fix it.  Then fix it.
> 
> enough people have been asking about xen that I was wondering if people 
> were ready to move forward and commit time and energy to solving the 
> problems, the very shortcomings you refer to.

Shouldn't it be enough that *you* are ready to move forward, etc?

> maybe my question would better be worded; how are people willing to fund
> making xen work?  Money or effort?

How about a different question: are you only going to work on this if there
are other people involved?  If the answer is 'no', then don't bother
surveying the landscape, just start digging.  Others will join you or not,
as they see fit, but you'll be solving your problems, so there's no hassle.

- Matt
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