Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 10:37:09 +0200 From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk@phk.freebsd.dk> To: Peter Jeremy <peterjeremy@optushome.com.au> Cc: grog@freebsd.org, cvs-src@freebsd.org, src-committers@freebsd.org, cvs-all@freebsd.org, Warner Losh <imp@bsdimp.com> Subject: Re: Apologies Message-ID: <6205.1148287029@critter.freebsd.dk> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 22 May 2006 18:02:55 %2B1000." <20060522080255.GB730@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org>
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In message <20060522080255.GB730@turion.vk2pj.dyndns.org>, Peter Jeremy writes: >I totally agree. My concern is the (apparent) lack of a formal process. Blunt speaking time: The reason why we don't have a more formal process is that whenever we try that, it does not work. The main reason it does not work is that whenever some feature is put on notice, a number of very vocal people will come out defending exactly that feature as the only reason the world still exists etc. Eventuallyy, somebody will grudingly say "I'll take responsibility for this code". And then nothing continues happen. And the old code is still sitting there festering in the tree, preventing us from progressing with far more important stuff. Then after some timeout, the issue is brought up again, and the cycle repeats. Until at some point, somebody gets sick and tired of it, and either A) walks away and says "let somebody else fix TTYs" or B) nukes the code with prejustice. In other words: PCVT did follow our formal process, but it's taken so long that people have forgotten about it. So If we are to have a (more) formal process, it will have to be formal in both directions. In the case of PCVT this would have been amounted to: "Fix PCVT to be SMP locked, do the right things with TTYs, work with whatever is the state of the art in keyboards. And do so before August 1st OR ELSE". Now, in your own mind, think for a moment what would have happened if I had sent that email out... The inherent conflict between the users who "just want it all to keep working forever" and the developers who have "very limited time to push shit around", there will always be that conflict in an un(der)funded open Source project. In the end, the developers will always win, one way or another (for 10 points: prove this by induction). It follows logically that the only way to be sure to keep any given piece of code alive is to become a developer and maintain it yourself. Poul-Henning -- Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20 phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956 FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
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