Looking to hire Software Engineers to Help Develop Subversion

[David Richards]

[This is a one-off and we will not post this again on this list]

Following the announcement by WANdisco yesterday that we would undertake the work to  fix / improve branching and merging in Subversion; we are on the lookout for new Subversion developers to complement our existing team. If you (or someone you know) have what it takes feel free to email me or careers {a.t}  WAndisco . com. We are looking to hire a large number of new developers. Also, contact us if you would just like to donate some of your own time.

I would also say that this work will be completed both for and as part of the community. I have tried to answer questions surrounding this on my blog. Any questions or concerns feel free to email me directly.

Highlights of the proposed improvements include:

• Enhanced Subversion merge performance, with features such as allowing users to take all of the changes committed on one branch and replay them on another
• Subversion rename tracking to eliminate tree conflicts during merges when file names change
• Improve correctness of 'SVN blame - g' to make it possible to follow complete merge history and trace authors of merged code
• Improve 'SVN import' to better manage branches.
• Make Authz architecture more granular similar to Unix filesystem permissions.
• Repository-dictated configuration.

--
Regards,

David Richards
President & CEO
WANdisco, Inc.

http://www.wandisco.com
http://blog.wandisco.com/david/



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[Pablo Beltran]

Hi,

I have no doubt about those all features will be good for the future of Subversion, from a technical point of view.

On the other hand, the underlaying message scares me. The message is clear: Apache can't drive the development process by itself and only Wandisco can do it in the right way and in timing.

And I think that this exceeds Subversion project and undermines Apache's authority.

Today is Wandisco and Subversion. Tomorrow could be Oracle or Microsoft doing the same with other project. I would not like see Apache become in a silly Software Factory.

But of course, I have not enough knowledge about how Apache internally works and perhaps I'm saying a very great stupidness. So, my apologizes for that if that is the case.

Pablo.

[David Weintraub]

On Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 3:03 PM, Pablo Beltran <pa...@svnflash.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have no doubt about those all features will be good for the future of
> Subversion, from a technical point of view.
>
> On the other hand, the underlaying message scares me. The message is clear:
> Apache can't drive the development process by itself and only Wandisco can
> do it in the right way and in timing.
>
> And I think that this exceeds Subversion project and undermines Apache's
> authority.
>
> Today is Wandisco and Subversion. Tomorrow could be Oracle or Microsoft
> doing the same with other project. I would not like see Apache become in a
> silly Software Factory.
>
> But of course, I have not enough knowledge about how Apache internally works
> and perhaps I'm saying a very great stupidness. So, my apologizes for that
> if that is the case.
>

I am going to look at this a bit differently: Has IBM taken over
Linux? A majority of the changes in Linux are done by IBM paid
employees. IBM has its own goals and its own ideas about what they
want to do with Linux.

However, I believe most people feel that Linux isn't an IBM project
despite the massive amount of work done by a single company.
Basically, IBM benefits from Linux, so they do a lot of code work,
sometimes working on areas that have been previously neglected. The
better Linux is, the more IBM can sell Linux solutions.

Subversion has had a lot of problems since version 1.5 has come out.
Basically, the merge/branch tracking isn't that great. In fact, many
people prefer the 1.4 version which doesn't make any pretensions about
tracking branching and merging.

Meanwhile, many people feel Subversion is past its prime. Many open
source projects are moving from Subversion to Git. Actually, this
makes sense for open source projects, but it is beginning to affect
commercial applications. People are starting to push Git as a
commercial SCM package.

I recently pointed out on another list that I might recommend a piece
of software I don't think is as good as another piece of software
simply because the "inferior" product plays better with the other
software the company uses and because users are more familiar with it.

I might not like Git as a commercial version control system, but if
most developers are more familiar with Git than Subversion, and 3rd
party products start integrating with Git in better ways than they
integrate with Subversion, guess what I'm going to start to recommend.

So far, Subversion isn't being forked, and a fork would not be good
for WANdisco. They are heavily dependent upon people selecting
Subverson as a version control system. What they want to do is fix
some of the underlying issues Subversion has had for the last three
years and get the Subversion project to accept them. I can't see any
reason why the Subversion project would reject them. After all,
Subversion was once run by CollabNet which had commercial interests in
Subversion. Yet, no one complained about CollabNet "dominating" the
project.

I hope that WANdisco is able to fix many of the issues that have been
plaguing Subversion for years. I don't believe that those who are
leading Subversion have "failed", but that a private company
committing resources to an open source project can be a good thing.

--
David Weintraub
qaz...@gmail.com

[David Richards]

David,

Absolutely correct!

Your analysis / explanation is much better than my own. Thank you.

- David

[Bob Archer]

I also think this is good news and look forward to seeing the WANDisco contributions to the project. And if I had any more knowledge of the svn internals I might be applying for one of those positions.

BOb

[Johan Corveleyn]

I like the "call for action", and the intention to invest more in the
development of Subversion. However, I do not like the blog entry. I
may be overly sensitive to this kind of thing, but I'm rather
antagonized by the paragraph "Hang on a Minute! Didn’t the Community
Just Announce A Road Map?".

I can feel the frustration with the lack of progress (or translated
frustration of Wandisco's big customers). I understand this
frustration (I feel it too sometimes), and the desire to do something
about it (that's why I got involved myself). However, this paragraph
has an undertone of blaming it on lack of involvement/dedication by
the community and developers, and bad behavior by some developers.

This is not a good way to motivate the community positively to work
with you, it's a negative message. At least that's how it sounds to me
(admittedly, I may not have the full picture of all that's going on,
but so do probably most readers of the blog).

I'm specifically talking about the following sentences:

- In answer to the question "Didn't the community just announce a road
map?": "Yes they did, but that’s pretty much all that happened (and
that really pisses us off.) "

What? I'm subscribed to the dev-list and the commits-list for that
last year and a half, and I've seen a *ton* of work being done. Yes,
it can always be more/better/faster or more predictable, but it's not
that nothing has been done. And I always thought it was kind of
obvious that work on new stuff from the roadmap would have to wait for
1.7 to be finished. Ok, 1.7 is slipping, but it seems it was harder
than anticipated. Regardless, I see a lot of people working hard. So
I'd just say: thanks to all the people who keep up the good work.

- "The commit logs (code committed by developers to the project) tell
the real story. We are not happy with the volume, speed or
participation on the project right now. "

I know (hope) you're probably not criticizing all those volunteers
spending their free time on Subversion, but it can be read that way.
As a participant in the user community, and beginning contributor
dev-wise, I feel kind of personally attacked by your unhappiness with
my lack of participation.

- "Blogging, or answering questions on user lists are important, but
so is writing source code."

Ok, the software needs to work, and features need to be developed. But
I do hope you're not down-playing answering questions on the user
list. I can't stress enough how important this list is to a lot of
users (and how many people put in countless hours to help out others).
Also, I think it's great that there are some developers who follow the
users list closely, answering some difficult user questions with
detailed explanations, backed by knowledge of svn internals. Ok,
that's time they aren't spending on coding, but IMHO it's time very
well spent.

- "We also believe it’s unhelpful when certain unscrupulous committers
decide to commit trivial changes in large files to simply get their
stats up. That behavior has no place in any open source project; it’s
a bad form and wastes everyone’s valuable time."

What? What are you talking about? I have seen nothing of the sort. Ok,
as I said, I only see part of the picture, so I might have missed
something. But even if it's true to some extent, I don't think it's a
good idea to make some vague accusations about it in this way. It puts
all committers in a bad light. Besides, even if this were the case, is
it really that big of a deal?

Cheers,
--
Johan

[David Richards]

Johan,

Firstly, thank you for caring about Subversion - we *do*, passionately.

1. The feeling of a lack of progress is not new and it's not just "WANdisco's big customers" as you put it. I don't think I am blaming any individual - it's just a fact of life as I said "We are not happy with the volume, speed or participation on the project right now". This is not new - it's been a criticism since 2007. In fact these [fundamental] requirements have been around and published since then. What we are saying, in fact, is that Subversion cannot live in a vacuum - there is no point in us complaining about a lack of action. That will achieve *nothing* about from wasting time. As I say at the outset "We are not doing this for direct commercial reasons. We are doing this to protect the future of Subversion. We are doing this because we care. We are doing this because we need to. We are doing this because it is the right thing to do."

2. On the question of the road-map / commit logs. Firstly WC-NG, httpv2 etc were already in train and we were already working on those things. Julian Foad, for example, one of our core developers was actually a long way into obliterate but he *had* to switch over to 1.7. I therefore don't regard 1.7 as an issue with the road-map. There are more immediate issues that *must* be tackled now, ideally in parallel associated with branching & merging.  Developers are working hard but there simply aren't enough of us, for whatever reason, *actively* working on the project right now. Not a criticism - just a fact of life.

3. On the question about "answering questions on user lists". Note I did say "Blogging, or answering questions on user lists are important" Active user lists are a good measure of an open source project and so is commits. I have already received several offers to help code and that is *very* much appreciated.

4. "unscrupulous committers decide to commit trivial changes in large files to simply get their stats up." I'm not going to go into that here but I repeat that the best way to create open source developers is by hiring great people who create wonderful source code. The core developers of Subversion, in my experience, are amazing individuals who maintain and create the best SCM product on the planet I am *not* repeat *not* criticizing or setting any of you / them in a bad light. that will *never* happen.

Johan, I hope this set's the record straight. We knew that by doing this that we would open ourselves up to criticism. We have tried alternative paths to effect change on the project but we feel that now it the time to act. 

Feel free to contact me directly and I am more than happy to talk directly with you.

- David

[Johan Corveleyn]

David,

Ok, thanks for settings the record straight. These nuances are important to me.

I definitely like the passion you guys have, the big plans, and the
intention to "take the bull by the horns" :-). I hope you can get the
ball rolling, with an actively participating community, and make
Subversion better ...

I look forward to it!

Cheers,
Johan

--
Johan

[David Richards]

You're welcome and I *really* appreciated the opportunity to set the
record straight. Whenever you put your head above the parapet...