[mapguide-users] Testing PostGIS / OGR - IRC Rocks!

[Jason Birch]

Martin,
 
I certainly wasn't suggesting that email go away, just that IRC is an incredible media for solving problems in real time.  The majority of the successful open source geo projects have this kind of channel in conjunction with their active mailing lists, and the positive activity on many of them (gdal, grass, mapserver, postgis, etc) is nice to see.  
 
The people that hang out on these channels the most are developers on geographically dispersed development teams.  This allows them to quickly make decisions and root out problems without dealing with email lag.  It's one of the "secret weapons" of open source development, where they have had to find tools to work around not being anywhere near each other.  Solving users problems is less of a focus than users and developers working together to solve problems with the software.
 
Obviously, it's not for everyone.  I find that there are days when I can't turn it on, or where I have to leave it minimised.  On days where I can pay attention and participate, I find it to be a valuable part of my open source experience.
 
Jason
 
P.S.  For new users, if you want someone's attention, make sure to put their nickname at the beginning of the line.  Most clients have command-line completion to help with this.  I missed one of Zac's questions because I was writing an email and the client wasn't flashing at me (sorry Zac).

________________________________

From: mapguide-users-bounces at lists.osgeo.org on behalf of Martin Morrison
Subject: RE: [mapguide-users] Testing PostGIS / OGR - IRC Rocks!

The chances of getting people like myself to use IRC is pretty slim.  I
simply can not and will not devote time during my day to read/answer
real-time posts.  There are way too many items going on from teaching
classes to meeting with clients to get much out of IRC. 

With the current setup a user can search the archives for a question.
What is going to be done to recreate that functionality?  If it's not
created then be prepared for a constant barrage of the same question
over and over and over and over and over...

Martin

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