Re: Cathedral, bazaar models and DL

[Petr Kovar <pmkovar gnome org>]

Hi!

Jorge González González <aloriel gmail com>, Sat, 15 May 2010 12:17:43
+0200:

> Hi all,
> 
> as a consequence of the Slovak GTP status, I also asked my team whether
> they are happy with our model and so on. Looks like we will probably try
> a bazaar like model, and I would like to know how the rest of the teams
> are modelled.

As for my team, Jiri already explained a lot in his messages in the Slovak
coordination thread. Our team approach is liberal in that it allows
interested translators to reserve a module for as long as they wish, given
one continuously works on one's module and is able to finish one's work in
time, e.g. before the module release. Having long-term assignment has
several advantages, I think that many have been already mentioned: clearly
apportioned team work, minimizing the risk of inconsistency and/or
different translation style, chance of being proud of "my" module work, etc.

But I wouldn't compare it to the cathedral-bazaar paradigm, really. Teams
with long-term module assignment can still work as in bazaar; just like in
many others non-l10n open source teams, they make use of work or task
assignment to their team members for a period of time, but this surely
doesn't make their development model cathedral-like.

The problem with the Slovak approach might be that it's simply too
excessive, a coordinator possesses team superpowers, and other
team members aren't able to reach a reasonable level of team work
responsibilities. Therefore it causes team conflict.

> In any case, in DL only one person can reserve a module. May this be a
> problem?

Hmm, I think that generally, only one person should be allowed to work on a
module at a time. It makes sure that translation work is not duplicated in
a simple, yet effective way.

> Besides, I'd like to ask, if someone sends a comment over a module
> without having reserved the module first, does DL send an email to the
> team? 

As far as I know, it does not, but it may post a message to users who
previously commented on the module page.
 
Best,
Petr Kovar