[Portland] Summarize current plan?

[John Cherry]

On Sun, 2006-03-12 at 16:08 -0800, Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 12, 2006 at 03:38:52PM -0600, Jeremy White wrote:
> > > If I recall correctly, Jeremy posted a glowing endorsement of the
> > > Portland project here for use in John's email, but
> > > his comments were about the "script to invoke
> > > the email client" use case.  I don't think it would be right
> > > to use his comment until some Portland deliverable addresses that in a
> > > way he can use.
> > 
> > Hmm.  No, I actually was fairly cheerful about the
> > glowing comment; the Portland Project has helped me in
> > a very direct way.
> > 
> > Of course, it was the analysis/documentation phase that
> > provided direct help to me; I'll gleefully point that out
> > to folks that are rushing to a new implementation rather
> > than working on documentation.
> > 
> > This is an area, though, where I think OSDL could
> > make a huge difference.  We're mostly volunteers,
> > and rational volunteers want to voluteer to do something
> > fun (like implement dapi).
> > 
> > But if OSDL can *pay* someone to do it... <grin>
> 
> I always wince when I hear people say this.  ;-)
> 
> However, I'm more than happy to help with docs.  Just for the record,
> OSDL's having me put in about 10% of my time, to split between the
> developer portal, and to help organize making a test suite for the
> Portland project.  The former is on pause waiting for feedback, and it's
> probably a bit early still for the latter, but I plan to put some time
> in it when I get back next month.
> 
> 
> I have a couple other observations related to OSDL funding for work on
> Portland.  I think often it's assumed OSDL has a huge coffer of money
> that is thrown semi-randomly at projects.  Obviously, in reality this is
> definitely not the case, else OSDL would have disappeared in a puff of
> improbability four years ago.  ;-)
> 
> OSDL invests efforts in areas where it gives value to its member
> companies.  That's why companies become sponsors.  In some cases, this
> is very direct - member company A wants to see work done on code B, so
> an engineer gets assigned to work on delivering that.  However, for many
> things companies need, it's not as simple as that; usually true success
> requires a cooperative community effort, and trying to work around that
> just leads to extreme grumpiness all around.
> 
> In this latter situation, money alone isn't enough.  You have to gain
> community concensus, and you need community participation in the
> implementation as well.  We've also learned that while
> analysis/requirements documents can be useful, they are not a good fit
> for how FOSS actually works.  You might recall the DTL Capabilities
> Document from early last year.  In that effort, OSDL *did* pay several
> engineers to work on it, along with people from member companies.  Yet
> we failed to get community participation in the process, and when it was
> finally released, the only thing it generated was funny looks. ;-)
> 
> 
> This time around, the approach being taken is fascinatingly different.
> OSDL is taking a more participatory role, and focusing its efforts on
> *facilitating* the community, with the hope that things can be figured
> out and solved bottom-up.  Resources have focused on helping the
> community organize, meet, plan, and communicate, and on encouraging
> companies to become part of the community as well.
> 
> OSDL's primary motivation is to help Linux become a good solution for
> enterprise desktops, as this gives value to OSDL's members.  But I think
> an underlying motivation could be that by assisting the community to be
> successful at what *it* chooses to do, companies will see these
> successes and increase their membership levels in OSDL - which would
> mean more resources for the community.
> 
> I've seen this particular model work firsthand with the NFSv4 testing
> project.  We helped the existing community figure out testing plans and
> how to get distros to test and include NFSv4, and so forth.  These
> successes resulted in at least one company increasing membership from
> bronze to silver, plus another $85k in donations for equipment, travel,
> and a new hire to further support that community's efforts.  I'd bet we
> can achieve similar sorts of successes with Portland.  (I hope it does
> prove highly successful, because this is much more enjoyable than the
> top-down driven model.)
> 
> So anyway, this is why it's exciting to see the prototyping work under
> way, and why I think we hope the press release John is putting together
> will be very well received.  :-)

Bryce, thanks for articulating OSDL DTL's role in the Desktop Linux
Community.  The _press release_ is actually going to be an article in
the April edition of LinuxWorld Magazine.  However, it is likely that
the press will pick it up as well.  I suspect that the article will be
well received for what it is, consistent messaging for desktop
development activites, not an architectural description of the Portland
project.

John