[Tinyos-devel] Re: TEP community review process

[Philip Levis]

On Nov 9, 2006, at 11:38 AM, Neil Hancock wrote:

>
> I would like to suggest that the TEP community review should be  
> more to
> promote an open listening process - what needs might the TEP meet,  
> and what
> might be missing from the TEP.
>
>  As you've identified the "peer" review by the core working groups  
> happen
> earlier in the project cycle when all the major decisions are made  
> and a cut
> at the scope of the TEP is probably verbally discussed (and not  
> written
> down). The unanswered question is then;  how well will it work and how
> useful will it be.
>
> Would it be more simple to view the TEP community review discussion  
> as part
> of building the community "customer" relationship.

Neil,

This is the root of the difference in our perspective. Open-source is  
rarely about the consumer. It's about the producer[1]. Very few  
TinyOS developers are paid to write code (they do not receive money  
from users). The work is therefore what people want to do, rather  
than what people want to be done. You shape the process by contributing.


>
> If anything near a full implementation has been implemented, with
> significant testing, then the implementation programmers (TEP  
> author?) is
> going to be still sweating from the exertion of programming,  
> simulating and
> testing AND going to be incredibly resistant to any suggestions of  
> change to
> their piece of artwork.

There's a bit of a disconnect here in terms of the amount of code  
we're talking about. The serial stack is ~550 semicolons. The CC2420  
stack is 850 semicolons. The boot sequence is 10!

Phil

[1] The rare case of commercial products aside (e.g., RHEL).