In the time before we unveiled the OSAF web site, I worried about how to create a sense of urgency about the project. In the world of venture-backed high tech startups, urgency is created by the need to ship product before the money runs out. As Samuel Johnson said, "The prospect of being hung in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully." Since the announcement, it has become clear that meeting the expectations we've created and not disappointing people has assumed a major role as motivator.
Announcing a project without having code to show, that is, committing an act of vaporware, is generally not regarded as a best practice in the software world. It lessens credibility and heightens cynicism. So why did we do just that? In an ideal world, we would have announced at a time when we had code to show. In the real world, I worried that the OSAF story would leak out and we'd lose the chance to have a "big bang" coming out.
I also thought that it might make things easier to recruit staff and get help if people knew what we were doing. We had pretty much all of the development preliminaries out of the way over the past year and had settled on an architecture and enough of a product definition to begin production coding, so it felt like an assumable risk to announce. It's turned out that we're clearly accelerating our progress as a result of the interest and early participation of many talented people and organizations. So far the bet is paying off.
We now face a series of challenges. One of the first is how to keep moving along with the product definition while still benefiting maximally from community involvement? On the one hand, the more high-quality input and debate about the product the better. To paraphrase Bill Joy, most smart people don't work in your own organization. On the other hand, decisions must be made, and voting, even if it is non-binding, isn't the way to go. Some successful open source projects have solved this by having a Benevolent Dictator for Life (Linus Torvalds for the Linux kernel, Guido Rossum for Python), who is respected, sets general directions, and makes final calls. I'm honored that I've been proposed for this on the design mailing list, and I accept. So now my head is really on the chopping block. Respect has to be maintained and earned through action. I hope I'm up to it.
In the product definition itself we must find a way to reconcile conflicting goals.
How does Chandler manage to be both an application and a platform? How do we build something which is an easily adoptable solution for end users, as individuals and in organizations, while also creating a platform on which developers can both extend the core application and build new ones?
How do we serve both the everyday user who wants an uncomplicated tool to meet basic needs and the power user with an appetite for advanced functionality?
How do we create a user experience which is sufficiently familiar to provide a smooth transition for new users yet is sufficiently different to support major new capabilities?
I'll have more to say about each of these in the coming days.
You may have noticed I've turned comments on. This is an experiment. Let's see what happens.
Posted by mitch@osafoundation.org at November 03, 2002 09:18 AMI'm glad to hear that you'll be assuming the role of the benevolent dictator. A large group of people can contribute successfully to a project, but I'm skeptical that a large group can actually *design* a product in the way you discuss in your Software Design Manifesto (http://www.kapor.com/homepages/mkapor/Software_Design_Manifesto.html).
Posted by: Steven Garrity at November 3, 2002 12:45 PM
It is impossible for everyone to get everything they want. Too many cooks spoil the broth! So i for one will be more than satisfied getting a nice workable, scalable product, with the potential for customization and add-ons, within a reasonable time frame.
Simplicity, customizability, and flexibility.
Sounds good to me!
Posted by: Bill Johnson at November 3, 2002 01:25 PM
"Decisions must be made, and voting, even if it is non-binding, isn't the way to go"
Care to elaborate?
Posted by: Erik Moeller at November 4, 2002 02:10 AM
You can not be a servant of both Masters..
However by encouraging the community built around the platform you allow the community to come up with innovative answers to both questions..
Its not leading with a heavy hand but leading maybe with a Mentoring hand in style..
Posted by: Fr ed Grott at November 4, 2002 07:55 AM
about your style sheet for this blog page. By specifying the line-height in your .blogbody class, you cause the text lines to overlap for some people in some browsers. (I use IE6 with large text).
This simultaneously makes your blog hard to read, and makes it look like you don't know what you're doing.
I bet if you removed the line-height spec from the .blogbody class, more people would be able to read what you are saying, and the comments that people write in to you.
cheers!
.blogbody {
font-family:verdana, arial, georgia, sans-serif;
color:#000;
font-size:13px;
font-weight:normal;
background:#FFF;
line-height:16px;
}
Posted by: george girton at November 4, 2002 09:03 AM
If IE6 is not smart enough to scale the line-height along with the font-size for your large text preference, perhaps IE6 is not a suitable browser for your needs.
Jim
Posted by: Jim Roepcke at November 4, 2002 11:09 AM
Mitch, love the weblog; thanx for keeping us up to date on your project and ideas. I'm intrigued with why you went with Python+wxWindows rather than Mozilla+XUL+JavaScript, since you are using Mozilla in your system design anyway. Was it performance concerns or something else?
Posted by: Brad Neuberg at November 4, 2002 05:45 PM
How is the hiring coming along? It sure sounds like you could use some help, if only in organizing and digesting the massive number of comments coming in. Of course there is some self-interest here, since I have sent in a resume and would love the PM job, but I bet that lots of people would be interested in an update on hiring, even if only to hear that you are buried under a thousand resumes.
Thanks,
Tim
Posted by: Tim Bishop at November 4, 2002 09:10 PM
The most important thing is to make the product simple yet useful. An open source product is bound to become as richly featured as its users need or want it to be, but if the underlying design does not mandate simplicity and usability, why should the users care?
Posted by: Amy Wohl at November 5, 2002 09:20 AM
I can't tell you how excited I was to hear about this effort. I used Agenda extensively (there has been nothing else like it), loved it, and have made a couple of attempts in my copious amounts of spare time (yea, right) to craft a modern modern version for personal consumption. It is a decidedly non-trivial task. I'm glad you are going after it and I'll help in any way I can.
Godspeed.
Posted by: Michael Williams at November 5, 2002 08:54 PM
I think that the javascript email organizer "ZOE" has a few cool ideas for linking email information. Might want to check it out.
(google: zoe and udell )
Posted by: Mark Crane at November 6, 2002 08:18 AM
On Oct30 you mentioned investigating wiki's as a means of communicating within OSAF. If you would like some advice/assistance on the twiki flavour there are several experienced hands at your disposal. Drop a line in http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/CoffeeBreak.
cheers,
-matt
Posted by: matt wilkie at November 6, 2002 09:33 AM
Hi Mitch,
I've been following your blog and the Chandler project for about a week now. I also just read your Software Design Manifesto and was surprised to see it was written in 1990. Wow! Seems that was pretty progressive thinking for 12 years ago.
Like Steven Garrity, I'm glad to hear you'll be assuming the Benevolent Dictator role. Along those same lines, I'd like to encourage you to get as many software designers involved as possible (these days, many of us call ourselves interaction designers).
My question: Let's say we do get many software interaction designers involved with the Chandler project. Is it possible for all of them same to make meaningful contributions to the project?
Perhaps you thought about this already? If you're interested in developing a model for involving a group of software interaction designers in a large open-source project, please drop me a line. I'd love to help.
With firmness, commodity and delight...
Cheers! --Brad Lauster
Posted by: Brad Lauster at November 6, 2002 10:53 AM
As to a blog readability problem, we are looking into it.
To Matt Wilkie - we've been lurking on twiki.org and learning a lot and will delurk
On the wxWindows vs. XUL issue, please see http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/dev/2002-October/000018.html
Posted by: Mitch Kapor at November 7, 2002 08:24 AM
About open public input venues like this comments:
You should see what a storm Zoot's customers and version testers are wreaking on Tom Davis!
Zoot is Dead! Zoot is NOT dead, but..
Zoot has an unmoderated (apparently) Yahoo group.
Joe O'Laughlin
Posted by: Joe O'Laughlin at November 7, 2002 02:35 PM