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# EW Community Center - comments

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

    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

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