[Pipet Users] Is Narval the AIL Piper may need ?

[Karl-Max Wagner]

> Then, contact me (jeff at bioinformatics.org) and tell me that you are ready to
> be added to the project.  When I add you, the system (admins actually) gives
> you a shell account.  You'll then have CVS access.

OK, then please add me.

> > Chances are even that we fail. I could easily point to projects
> > that are not getting anywhere because they apparently stopped
> > understanding what they want to do.
> 
> I like to think that the number one reason Free/Open projects fail is lost
> interest by the primary developers.  Many of these guys just "move on", but it
> may be that they "stopped understanding what they want to do", as Karl-Max
> said, and that caused them to lose interest.

That is not the only problem. Projects may stay alive but in the
end be of no real use. Here a particularly evil example: There
is a large simulation project out there ( I'm not getting any
more specific here as it is not my intention to bash on someone
) which started out as an interesting idea with a focus on
signal processing systems simulation. They were not very well
focused, but that is an asset in the beginning. Then they
decided to dump the original project and convert it into
something much larger, broader etc., just it was evident that
they had no idea what real problems they wanted to solve. Since
then they are floating along more or less as a wonderful
theoretical project in search for a problem to solve. Or
suchlike. They are still around, though.

> Oh yes, I agree with that!  Piper has spent years in the "concept phase", and

??? AFAIK Piper is at most 1 year old....

> it is probably still there.  If we just plowed ahead from day one (assuming we
> didn't have to wait to find each other) and finished the project in a couple
> months, we would not have been able to include many of the concepts developed

Exactly. Other extreme: focus too narrow. Serves only a small
niche. End of project.

> later.  And they may not have ever been includable.  But, how long is too long
> for the concept phase? ;-)

Piper is still very young. I'd not worry too much about that
right now. And particularly, there is no abrupt end to this.
Eventually parts will settle down, more will settle down, until
the framework is in place. In fact it is best to keep the
concept phase open as long as possible, at least as far as it
does not hinder ongoing work too much.

One key goal is to have a framework that is flexible enough to
allow integrating new projects without any need to change
anything ( this is the ideal we probably will never attain but
we must try to get reasonably close to ). 

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        "It was hell. They knew it.          Karl-Max Wagner
          But they called it                 karlmax at oberland.net
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