Date: Thu, 9 Sep 1999 00:48:57 -0400 (EDT) From: "Matthew N. Dodd" <winter@jurai.net> To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Contributors, or lack thereof Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.10.9909090025590.14497-100000@sasami.jurai.net> In-Reply-To: <4.2.0.58.19990908211304.046462a0@localhost>
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On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, Brett Glass wrote:
> At 02:54 PM 9/8/99 -0400, Matthew N. Dodd wrote:
>
> >On Wed, 8 Sep 1999, Brett Glass wrote:
> > > 5. An "elitist" attitude which discourages even very talented
> > > potential contributors to the code base;
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> >
> >Ok, I can't claim to be even moderately talented but having transitioned
> >from a 'potential contributor' to an 'actual contributor' to a 'somewhat
> >active committer' over the period of about 2 months my perception of the
> >FreeBSD project is in direct opposition of this statement.
>
> Maybe that's because (a) You've tried to contribute code, not other things
> such as strategies for advocacy;
Well, you didn't say advocacy strategies, you said 'contributors to the
code base', so changing arguements here isn't going to work.
> and/or (b) you've contributed in areas where the person or persons who
> controlled that "turf" welcomed the input. The few times I've
> volunteered code, the person responsible for that area has acted
> insulted that I didn't think it was perfect already.
I don't see any of these contributions in gnats so its a little hard to
comment on the specific instance.
Since when does a limited sampleing allow you to paint such a broad
picture of the whole project?
Regardless, a number of things I initially wished to 'fix' in FreeBSD
weren't broken to begin with. In some cases cosmetic 'fixes' should and
are rejected. In some cases they're desired.
I'm not going to say that the Project doesn't have its Matt Dillons and
Terry Lamberts but in general those situations don't bleed over into the
rest of the general population.
I'm sure that are lots of contributors that coded up a nifty widget and
never managed to hold interest in it long enough to pursue getting it into
the tree. While it would be nice if this never happened, it does happen
but not out of any act of malice. I've got one example thats pretty good;
arcnet drivers, which I'm sort of sitting on. I'm trying to get them
working but its not high on my list of priorities and it requires other
work to cleanly integrate into FreeBSD, which I don't have the cycles to
deal with ATM. Am I rejecting the work that fjoe@iclub.nsu.ru did in
porting the NetBSD drivers to FreeBSD? No. Could he do something to
speed up the process? Yes. That he only posted a few times about it
indicates to me that it works well enough for him in his environment and
he feels no real need to push the code until it gets committed. Clearly
the Project loses because of this but unless someone else is willing to
step in and do testing, port the generic ARP code from NetBSD and push
those changes into the tree before I get around to it there isn't much we,
as the Project, can do.
What would your solution be in the generic case, and in this specific
case?
Should we just blindly commit everything that manages to patch cleanly and
deal with the consequences? This seems to be the way that Linux does
things but I really don't want to go down that path. The FreeBSD way of
doing things has produced some very good results. Letting things get
sloppy at this point would not be progress in a positive direction.
> > > 6. A shortage of contributors to handle known problems in the code
> > > base (due to items 1 and 5 above); and
> >
> >The rate of growth of the committer base is in line with the projects
> >ability to properly assimilate the new members.
>
> If so, then how come Jordan, and others, frequently post messages saying,
> "We're only human and we don't have enough help?"
Because this is the nature of ALL projects, free software included.
I didn't say that "the growth rate of the committer base is in line with
the workload to which it applies itself".
You're trying to switch arguements again.
Stop.
> >There will always be a shortage of contributors.
>
> It could sure get a lot better.
There will always be a shortage of contributors.
> >I see a large part of your complaints as simple hand-waving.
>
> No, they're not hand-waving. They're based on consistent data from
> multiple, reliable sources.
No, they're based on you not sticking to a single arguement and following
it to the point where its fully settled. If you keep switching arguements
the second people start to shoot you down you'll never arrive at any
conclusions.
Since this tactic appears to be deliberate to forward some set of goals
that you've kept to yourself, I choose to call this behavior
'hand-waving'.
--
| Matthew N. Dodd | '78 Datsun 280Z | '75 Volvo 164E | FreeBSD/NetBSD |
| winter@jurai.net | 2 x '84 Volvo 245DL | ix86,sparc,pmax |
| http://www.jurai.net/~winter | This Space For Rent | ISO8802.5 4ever |
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