[Rebuild] Communication to data consumers wrt the licence change (draft)

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 03/20/2012 10:37 PM, Simon Poole wrote:
> I've reworked the text to take in to account that we are now planning for a
> hard cut over.

I would still like to find out who exactly the "we" in this is. Because 
I surely am not, and I am not aware of any discussion within the rebuild 
group where we said "oh, let's change our minds".

We all thought that a soft cut over would make sense when we had our 
telephone call. Why the sudden change? Everyone I spoke to thinks that 
the soft cut over is prudent, easier to monitor, better for avoiding 
mistakes, and it is clear that it is less stressful.

It was Simon who suddenly claimed that he "thought" the idea had been 
"dropped". But until now I have found nobody who actually dropped the 
idea. Simon, maybe you can find out exactly what led you to believe that 
the idea was "dropped".

I am relatively sure that the "hard cut over" is going to be a major 
cock-up and if I cannot prevent it, then at the very least I want to be 
able to point the finger at someone afterwards and say: This 
person/these people have decided that we will not go the soft route.

As things currently are, everyone talks as if it had somehow been 
decided that the hard route was necessary but NOBODY seems to have made 
this decision.

I have the feeling that some of you may be thinking that it has to be 
done this way because some people on the OSMF board are throwing a fit 
at the thought of not getting things done by 1st April. And then, when 
the shit hits the fan, the very same board members will say: "We trusted 
that rebuild group/engineering group/whatever group would do this in the 
right way, had we known that this would lead to two weeks without any 
mapping then of course we would have acted differently...".

The "hard cut" way is the more error-prone, more problematic way. Being 
forced to run a few tests quickly over the weekend on software that 
isn't even finished today, make a guess of how much read-only-time or 
downtime would be required and then act on that is a very high-risk game 
and it is NOT GOOD and NOT RIGHT.

This doesn't need to drag on for months but nobody, really nobody, is 
served by rushing it. "1st April" is a date picked out of thin air by 
three or four people. It is not our fault if that date doesn't match 
reality, and it is our duty to do the best for the project, not the best 
for the ego of three or four board members.

And I still want to know who exactly decided to "drop" the soft cut 
over. I want this recorded. Who, when, made the decision that we need to 
take the more error-prone, more stressful path that tries to get the 
change through more quickly at the expense of everyone who wants to map.

Bye
Frederik

-- 
Frederik Ramm  ##  eMail frederik at remote.org  ##  N49°00'09" E008°23'33"