[SciPy-dev] openopt (prelimenary) announce

[dmitrey]

Alan G Isaac wrote:
> On Thu, 6 Sep 2007, Matthieu Brucher apparently wrote:
>   
>> I don't know exactly how much you wrote (in terms of 
>> number of caracters), but I don't think that "most of the 
>> code" is the right locution. You can perhaps write that it 
>> was written by both of us ? 
>>     
>
> I think Dmitrey makes a conceptual distinction
> between the OpenOpt framework and the optimizers
> it relies on. Your project he referred to here as 
> GenericOpt. (Your name?) I think this distinction
> captures well where the two of you put your main efforts?
> I realize now that I made that distinction as well, so I did 
> not "stumble" where you did in reading it.  This in fact may 
> be a bit confusing, so a proper rephrasing is needed.  Sorry 
> for missing that.
>
> Cheers,
> Alan Isaac
>
>   
so, despite I insisted optimizers remain also as separate package, the 
idea of merging optimizers(/GenericOpt) to openopt, as I suppose from 
the very beginning, wasn't the best one, partially because they serves 
different goals and different motivations.

Maybe we should handle these packages separately (providing connection, 
of course)?
Then we could make 2 announcements: one of openopt release and one of 
optimizers/GenericOpt.

As another solution, we could announce in one message 2 scikit modules - 
OpenOpt and GenericOpt (or optimizers), where GenericOpt is supplied 
with connection to OpenOpt. Also, afaik, it's possible to implement in 
setuptools automatic download of GenericOpt while installing openopt (in 
any way, I don't mind if Matthieu want to continue host a part or all 
his code in /solvers/GenericOpt and /solvers/optimizers directories as 
it is now).

The problem of "openopt" word is not 100% mine - the problem is that I 
discussed the term with our dept, and they were quite agree to provide 
quite good maintain to "our openopt project" (at least with their 
advices), but what should I say them that now, when they will ask like 
"what? we discussed to be single author and now we are just one of lots, 
with undefined exactly rights - for name ("What?! Our OpenOpt is no 
longer our?!" - would it be scipy-owned, I could so-so silently avoid 
the (one of biggest) question, but real humans is much more big 
problem), for sponsor's income sharing (if it will be), etc, so each 
time we intend to do something we should discuss (and maybe even more - 
take agree) from foreign language speaker(s)? nope, we are not 
interested anymore..." :(

As for names, we could (as one of possible solutions) don't mention them 
at all.

Regards, D.
P.S. Maybe Alan or someone else will remind me once again - scipy team 
decided to get all rights of the GSoC code to itself, and all those my 
words that I had wrote to my mentors doesn't matter. Ok, I don't mind, 
you really have the right, the only thing I would say is that I hadn't 
know it from the very beginning (it's very unlikely that I would cease 
openopt development because of this, but at least I would reorganize 
some openopt tasks priorities, that would simplify openopt maintenance 
by someone else, should I cease maintenance because of my dept's demand 
to switch to other projects and/or other reasons).
As someone from scipy dev team said like "GSoC project is just a way to 
deter is a student appropriate for work in a team" (so it sounds like 
they don't care very much about results obtained and who is their 
owner), and, as
 http://code.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=60327&topic=10728
says, the situation is unclear - and very bad if the question arises in 
a middle or end of program (as for me I think it's not my or mentors 
failure - it's a serious GSOC drawback that should be fixed, the 
question must be discussed between student and organization from the 
very beginning, maybe even when organization only appeared in GSoC 
members list it should inform who will be copyholder of student's code).

Ok, I think I said all my thoughts about the problem, if Matthieu and/or 
mentors team will find my suggestions inappropriate, let mentors (and/or 
scipy dev team, and/or Python GSoC 2007 administrator JamesTauber 
<http://wiki.python.org/moin/JamesTauber> - as you wish) decide which 
text to publish (as code owners you even could do it by yourself if you 
want to (announce your openopt), I don't mind, or you could send final 
text to me to publish).

Regards, D.