Off for a while

Do you like to promote your wxWidgets based application or component!? Post it here and let's see what the critics have to say. Also, if you found that ONE wx component the world needs to know about, put it here for future reference.
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RN
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Off for a while

Post by RN »

Hey Guys,

Well... looks like I boot as an official developer. Who didn't see that coming? :lol:

I suppose someone is going to look back and this and use me as a case for my projects should not grant access so readily...

For the longest time, especially recently I thought about sending diffs of my commits before I committed them to someone like Stefan Csomer - but there just wasn't a whole lot of communication at all with the other devs - what you saw on wx-dev was what I saw. That was the most disappointing part, for sure. Not that I was particularily easy to get along with even privately but at least someone could have humered me a bit. HAHA.

Let's see here, things I regret -
* Anything to do with David. Tried to get along with him and took a real effort to do so via private conversation, getting burned hard each and every time (and please don't use those old forest and occam sayings, they are rather lame). Y'know David you can't make assumptions about what a person is like based on some e-mails - I certainly don't. I'm sure you're nicer in real life :).
* Cleaning up the mac mime types thing. I guess its good that I did commit it at least - it functions quite well. I should note that in non-classic mode it should prefer Info-macos.plist and in classic mode Info-macosclassic.plist.

At least hopefully it'll die down the flames on wx-dev, that place is looking like a mental institution lately :). My lack of communication skills didn't help it.

Anyway, I'll be taking off for a while to think about some things. I'll probably never get commit access back realistically, so there really isn't too much to hope for in that area. Plus, I spent 1.5 unpaid years to devote time to the project and convinced quite a few people to "make the switch".

Gotta go, see you guys again some time.

Ryan Norton (Yeah, different user name, "don't ask"* :)).

* - changed email address to something bogus, and then the account got deactivated
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Post by KevinHock »

I haven't been a regular on the forum (I still prefer the mailing lists), but hopefully my comments are still welcome here.

I'm sorry to hear that you feel you need to take off for a while; I know how much you do on the forums helping other users, finding bugs, writing patches, etc. It is valuable work and it will be missed. There's a lot more to wxWidgets than having CVS write acccess, as the thousands of developers wordlwide using wxWidgets will surely attest.

There's plenty of hope for you, or anyone for that matter, to gain CVS access with consistent, high-quality contributions to wxWidgets over a long-ish period of time (though I am not the authority on who has access). Whether or not you get commit access back is entirely up to you.

Your 1.5 years of service are very much appreciated, but being unpaid is not unique--not many of us are paid for our involvement. I'm truly sorry you feel like you "gotta go" since no one is asking you to leave, but you need to do whatever you feel is right for you.
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Re: Off for a while

Post by ABX »

RN wrote:Hey Guys,

Well... looks like I boot as an official developer. Who didn't see that coming?
I'm not sure to what issues you are refering exactly because I do not know private mails but I still see you at https://sourceforge.net/project/memberl ... up_id=9863 and I hope it is still valid page. And well, not only I do not have any payment after last 2 wxYears, but also I do not have any new children with my wife after wxEvenings and wxNights ;-)

Best regards, ABX
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Re: Off for a while

Post by RN »

ABX wrote:
RN wrote:Hey Guys,

Well... looks like I boot as an official developer. Who didn't see that coming?
I'm not sure to what issues you are refering exactly because I do not know private mails but I still see you at https://sourceforge.net/project/memberl ... up_id=9863 and I hope it is still valid page. And well, not only I do not have any payment after last 2 wxYears, but also I do not have any new children with my wife after wxEvenings and wxNights ;-)

Best regards, ABX
Yea, the CVS is hosted on SunSite, which is different from sourceforge.

Went ahead and removed myself from it... now I need to clean up the patches/bugs assigned to me...
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Post by Jorg »

Hi Ryan,

I am sorry to hear this. I hope that you'll be still attending the forum regulary, we always liked having you around. I never got write access either (ok I never asked for it as well ;-) but I do not really mind that.

I do not know what the problem was, as I am not subscribed to the wx-devs forum. I simply hope it will all cool down ..

Anywayz, good luck in your time off, and I hope I see you soon again on this board.

ps. Glad you 'deactivated' the account and did not delete it .. That would be drastic and something I really would regret .. :-)

See you soon!
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Post by eco »

There goes the developer who is most in touch with this community (which, at 1000+ users is fairly sizeable) :(. At least we still have ABX I suppose (and I really do appreciate when developers are willing to take some time to help users directly). Thanks for all the hard work, Ryan. You are one of the few developers who could maintain their cool even when they were being flamed directly by trolls on the dev list.
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Post by ABX »

Jorg wrote:I do not know what the problem was, as I am not subscribed to the wx-devs forum. I simply hope it will all cool down ..
I'm subscribed there and still I do not know fully what the current problem was.

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Post by KevinHock »

The problem wasn't on wx-dev, per se. It should be made clear that no one (that I know of) asked Ryan to leave or told him he couldn't be involved with wxWidgets. The only thing that changed was that his CVS write access was revoked, as Ryan mentioned in his first post. Any other action (such as leaving this forum) is being done at Ryan's own volition. I am saddened by his choice but it is his to make, but he certainly isn't being forced to go anywhere. I too wish that he didn't feel like his only choice was to leave, but as I said above, he has to do what he feels is right.
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Post by Jorg »

Hi Kevin,

Why was his write access revoked? I am just curious, I cannot assume he was a bad coder? As it would be beef he and Stephan had, then it sounds like a personal pay-back action .. but once again, I am totally unaware of what went on between them :?:

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Post by Avi »

Personally, I'm amazed to hear there is such lack of communication between the wxWidgets developers (as Ryan pointed out)... Don't you guys meet somewhere else than the mailing list? MSN? ICQ? AIM? IRC? Somewhere where you put your ideas and designs together and discuss it? Or maybe this wxForum and the mailing list are enough? :idea:
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Post by KevinHock »

Ryan's change in CVS access was not due to any one "beef" nor was it personal pay-back (one person does not say who has and who does not have access). It was also not due to a lack of communication among the wxWidgets developers. While I'm not sure whether or not it's appropriate for me to say too much about this, I should say that I was not directly a part of the decision.

Ryan is an ethusiastic, can-do person who contributed quite a lot to wxWidgets, both on the development and user side. He tackled many ambitious projects, like wxMediaCtrl. The root of the problem was that Ryan was ofter over-eager to commit unfinished, "raw" code or commit changes with unconsidered far-reaching implications, sometimes causing problems for both users and other developers, who were forced to fight fires due to things already being committed rather than taking care of unfinished items in a timely fashion prior to being committed. This was disruptive to the workflow of the other developers, and even after many discussions with Ryan about the desired workflow for wxWidgets development (including one I had with him publicly a couple of months ago on wx-dev), nothing changed.

I hope that this explanation helps. Again, I am sad that Ryan feels he must abandon everything positive about his time and experience with wxWidgets. It seems like an unnecessary knee-jerk reaction, especially when he admits that it wasn't unexpected.
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Post by Jorg »

Thanks Kevin...

Well I can agree ofcourse when code gets 'overeagerly' committed and not tested enough can cause problems. I have the same at work with some collegues. It can be a pain, but talking about it helps a lot.

And Ryan, if you are reading this, I could have asked you directly I suppose. Don't want to talk about you as a third person in the room, but I was just curious I guess ;-)

I hope things will settle down. And I do realise a code hump of this magnitude needs some structure, care and thought .. heck at work I have to manage 3000 files as well together with my fellow co-worker, and then too it gets annoying when code is broken ;-) but we are all human, and I am still amazed so many people can pull it off to get wxWidgets where it is now..

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Post by RyanAlt »

There's waay too much stuff going on as is, so I'll try to be concise :).
KevinHock wrote:Ryan's change in CVS access was not due to any one "beef" nor was it personal pay-back (one person does not say who has and who does not have access). It was also not due to a lack of communication among the wxWidgets developers. While I'm not sure whether or not it's appropriate for me to say too much about this, I should say that I was not directly a part of the decision.
Yea, simply put I should say on my diffs a couple of days before committing them - didn't really fully understand for about 1.5 years... deeply sorry about that.

You know, the whole wxMediaCtrl was meant as a christmas-present type thing - Part of the reason I went a little wacky when everyone started blasting me for it (I guess they assumed I was just pushing it on them or something). That was the other reason why I lost CVS access, some things I didn't discuss with the devs before hand, sorry about that too...

Some people kept putting that in parables or something (something to do with power and trees) which was confusing and had me thinking it was something different.
KevinHock wrote: I hope that this explanation helps. Again, I am sad that Ryan feels he must abandon everything positive about his time and experience with wxWidgets. It seems like an unnecessary knee-jerk reaction, especially when he admits that it wasn't unexpected.
First, I want to thank the wxWidgets devs who shared their experience with me - I really did learn a lot about a lot.
KevinHock wrote: nothing changed
Also, thanks to Eco for his message - he pretty much nailed why I left/leaving on the head (I was pretty much gone a few days before I was officially let go - that's why nobody saw any commits out of me, otherwise I would have cleaned up the mac mime types thing. Removal of cvs write was just the straw that broke the camel's back etc.).


At least I feel confident that I conducted myself in a professional manner :).

I hear Apple included wxWidgets in Tiger (a development version - at least its consistant with their cvs releases of gcc, :lol:!!).

Good Luck,
Ryan Norton
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Post by tierra »

I just wanted to say thanks to Ryan for all the time and work you've dedicated to wxWidgets, moreso for the time spent helping users, which is something the wxWidgets project is lacking in. The code isn't very helpful without users who understand how it works. I hope to see you come back soon. I hope this small incedent doesn't scare you away from the wxWidgets project for the rest of your life. Despite the developers intentions, this project has somewhere to go, and really needs all the help it can get. No-one's opinions or experience should be turned down, just carefully discussed, explained, and considered.
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Post by HopeSeekr »

Goddess damn, dude!

You were one of the few main people on wx-dev that never defamed me :-( I'll miss your rationality and non-biased nature.
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