From steve@geophys.washington.edu Thu Jun  8 18:29:34 2000
Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 18:22:34 -0700 (PDT)
From: Steve Malone <steve@geophys.washington.edu>
To: earthw-list@nmt.edu
Subject: EW Community Center - comments


A reaction to Mitch Wither's Jun 8 note:

Mitch Withers raises some interesting issues, most of which I agree with.  
However, the solution to the problems he sees is not obvious.  The original
intent of the Earthworm Advisory Board was to help accomplish some of the
things that Mitch sees as problems but, for what ever reasons, it has not done
much more than set up a WEB page for documentation, a list-serve address and
encourage the original earthworm team to generate some documentation.  These
were all good objectives and useful accomplishments but it doesn't seem to be
enough to result in what Mitch is hoping for.

I interpret in Mitch's e-mail a desire for a better way to document and share
what is already available and to coordinate the inclusion of new features or
modules into the "official" release.  I agree with him that there is a great
need but am not sure what the EW community center is or could be.  How would
this work?  A neighborhood community center has a staff who schedule meetings,
maintain the bulletin boards, mailing lists and newsletters, arrange for
building maintenance and keep order when rowdy kids come to use the B-Ball
court.  Where is such a staff for the EW Community Center?  It seems to me
that this MUST be someone the USGS must come up with. This must be someone who
is knowledgeable about computers, seismic data, maybe earthworm, but most
importantly this person must understand the way community development of
software can work.  It seems that those in the earthworm inner sanctum and/or
their bosses are not followers of Richard Stallman or Linus Torvalds.

Besides hoping that the USGS (who is that really) will come to see the value
in having such a person the rest of us can help right now.  Mitch's number 8
point suggests that the "earthw-list@nmt.edu" can be used more.  I agree.
Looking at its archive (http://www.cnss.org/EWAB/earthw) I see less than 40
entries in almost 4 years from only about a dozen different people.  A regular
contributor to this list is Kent Lindquist who has provided several useful
suggestions and programs in the past and who has provided the only response
that Mitch's note so far.  So, what about the rest of you 65 subscribers to
the earthw-list?  Lets hear some reaction.

I, for one, would also like to hear some reaction to the Apr. 14 note from
Chris Wood on a POSIX version of earthworm.  It seemed like a really good idea
to me to support such a thing, but these seems to be no reaction from anyone.  
Mitch calls for no splinter groups. OK, but if there is no interest in
cooperating with someone who has spent a lot of effort to provide an upward
compatible POSIX port (and supposedly fix a bunch of basic bugs too) why
should those needing POSIX to run on HP or Linux or what ever not go their own
splinter group way?  Why is the inner sanctum ignoring the whole thing?

For my part I will continue to maintain the EWAB WEB pages and include any
earthw-list messages in its archive.  I will also make any changes to the way
these pages work, what gets included, how the documentation is updated or
displayed, or any other suggestions that are sent my way.  HOWEVER, they
should be sent to the earthw-list first so that everyone can see and comment
on suggested changes.

	Steve Malone			E-mail: steve@geophys.washington.edu
	Geophysics Program 		Phone: (206) 685-3811
	University of Washington	FAX: (206)543-0489
	Box 351650			Office: ATG-226
	Seattle, WA 98195	        http://www.geophys.washington.edu



