David E Jones wrote:
After reading enough similar comments from a number of people in recent weeks I think I'm starting to come around to a different way of looking at things, and I think I know how to fix all of these community problems with people not getting along and the software quality falling well below industry standards.
I will ask the same question I asked before: Why do think you need to "fix" the community?
I don't see where the community has changed considerably lately. Maybe it's just your perception that has changed. I've been involved with OFBiz for six years, and the kind of things you feel need fixing have been going on all along. A quick review of the dev mailing list will prove that.
I would be against any initiative to scale back commit privileges. That would take us back to the days when only a handful of people had those privileges and OFBiz stagnated as a result. We have seen explosive growth in the project recently and, in my opinion, that growth can be attributed to the number of committers we have.
The recent discussions that seem to have some people upset are not a bad thing. Those discussions prove that people are involved and willing to participate. That is a good thing from my perspective. It is not something that needs to be "fixed."
As far as code quality is concerned, I don't believe it is fair to blame poor quality on unnamed "inexperienced" programmers. The fault lies in the design philosophy that has always been a part of this project: "Just enough rope to shoot yourself in the foot." I could go back and retrieve emails where I argued for code that is well structured, but I was shot down because "we don't want to make things too difficult for the developers." Well structured, well designed code might steepen the learning curve for some, but the payoff is a more reliable code base.
If Hans wants to pack up his marbles and go home, then let him. The rest of us will continue to participate on the community process. We don't need to be "fixed." If Hans leaves, it's not because the community is broken, it's because he isn't willing to cooperate.
-Adrian
