[2742] in Release_7.7_team
Re: Meeting Wednesday; AUI considerations
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Susan B. Jones)
Mon May 14 09:01:01 2001
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In-Reply-To: <200105140513.BAA04097@egyptian-gods.MIT.EDU>
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001 09:00:55 -0400
To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@mit.edu>, release-team@mit.edu
From: "Susan B. Jones" <sbjones@MIT.EDU>
Cc: aui@mit.edu
A wednesday meeting sounds good. Everyone's hard work notwithstanding, I
think that Greg is right.
Susan
At 1:13 AM -0400 5/14/2001, Greg Hudson wrote:
>There will be a release team meeting this Wednesday at 1pm. Beta
>should also happen around then, and probably will, although there are
>some update safety issues (read: space checks) we ought to try to
>resolve before then if at all possible, and some things like Sunblade
>support which it would be nice to have.
>
>I drafted the following note two days ago and decided to run it by
>Bill and Andrew before sending it to the team. They thought it was
>reasonable to raise the question but didn't agree with my answer. I
>have some new comments at the end. I'd like to discuss this issue at
>least briefly in release team, but I think the answer will be "press
>on for beta, reevaluate before early," since we're not yet at the
>point of no return.
>
>---
>
>I've been doing a lot of thinking lately about developments in IS and
>how they relate to Athena, and I've concluded that I have to ask a
>very difficult question, especially coming after we've all put so much
>effort into this project:
>
> Can we justify the cost of changing the default Athena user
> interface under the current circumstances?
>
>Here are the reasons why, as painful as it is to admit it, I currently
>think the answer is no:
>
> 1. Athena development has been reduced to a skeleton crew. (A
> conversation with rferrara today confirmed that there is no
> possibility of replacing tb this fiscal year, and I can't
> imagine being able to find new money for an Athena
> developer given the current set of IS goals.) With five or
> six EFT developers, we could maintain the environment while
> making mildly ambitious improvements like AUI; with 3.5 EFT
> developers, I think AUI is over the top.
>
> The above statement may seem too conservative to some
> people, especially with most of the AUI delivery work
> already done. Consider that we have to be able to
> accomodate the possibility of turnover and even further
> headcount reduction, that we are doing a relatively poor
> job of fixing problems in the Athena 8.4 environment, and
> that a great many of the problems with the new user
> interface will not be discovered until after it goes live.
>
> 2. The deliverables of AUI have been trimmed back to the point
> where it is now basically a facelift. The only real new
> value to users is that the new environment resembles
> Windows more (but not in the way they care about,
> i.e. being able to run Word) and is more customizable. The
> menus have been reorganized, but we could trivially apply
> that work to dash if we want to.
>
> 3. IS is currently committed to a direction wherein Athena
> will no longer be the centerpiece of academic computing in
> a few years (source is rferrara, again). Many of the
> originally perceived benefits of AUI are predicated on the
> assumption that AUI would become a framework for long-term
> improvements (GUI versions of operations currently done on
> the command line); it now appears that Athena does not have
> enough of a future to warrant ever implementing those
> improvements.
>
> 4. I am increasingly convinced that our testing strategy is
> not adequate for this type of change. A majority of our
> testers do not use the default user environment, so for the
> most part AUI would receive only cursory testing before
> going live.
>
> 5. Overcommitting ourselves with AUI may make it more
> difficult for Athena staffers to explore roles in new IS
> projects, which seems unfair if Athena development is going
> to be an eventual dead end.
>
>If we do not change the default interface, I see no reason why we
>should not leave the GNOME software in the release, and even allow
>people to use the new environment by touching
>~/.athena_gnome_interface. But it wouldn't have to be documented by
>TPS, and it wouldn't be as critical for dev to fix irregularities in
>the GNOME interface or for OLC to be able to answer questions about
>it. And, of course, it would not be forced onto existing users who
>have already learned the current Athena interface.
>
>Please think seriously about this question; we will discuss it at
>release team on Wednesday. (People are also welcome to reply to this
>message, of course.)
>
>---
>
>Whether Athena is really a dead end is still somewhat in question. I
>know that IS will be submitting a proposal to Curry for new money for
>a scalable 1-1 computing project, and it's conceivable (although I
>have doubts) that some of that money could be spent on staff to adapt
>Athena for the Linux side of these laptops. Andrew pointed out that
>having AUI might be good ammunition in fighting for more resources of
>this nature.
>
>I remain concerned that if Athena does turn out to be a dead end, we
>could be putting ourselves in an untenable position for maintaining it
>during the transition. It will be a hell of a lot easier to keep
>Athena going on a skeleton crew if there isn't a big festering pile of
>GNOME code in the critical path between users and their work.
