Rogue wrote:
[]
I suppose what I'm trying to say, on a more sinister tone, is how do
you ensure the seriously packaged .info/.patches are not drown into the
mass of hobbyists contributions? how do you ensure that you don't kill
the motivation of the dedicated individuals?
My €0.02:
Finks main strength (to phrase it a little provocatively) is precisely
that it is entirely run by hobbyists and amateurs. This doesn't mean
that some of the Fink maintainers or developers might not have had a
professional training in some computer-related field, but even then they
are often acting as self-taught dilettantes outside of their field of
knowledge. The main motivation of most maintainers is either
self-interest - they need a package for their own usage - or fun, or
both of these at the same time, but rarely any drab sense of duty or
responsibility.
This gut-controlled approach has made Fink survive several severe crises
that would have killed many other more head-controlled projects. It also
allows for a very low level of bureaucratic organization and therefore
for sometimes extremely fast reactions to user's demands or other
emergencies. It is also the secret behind the fact that Fink packages
usually "just work" (which doesn't mean they won't suffer from bit-rot
after a while, in particular when the maintainer loses interest).
One downside of this is that new packages won't get accepted unless they
are of direct interest to one of the developers. Thus the most wonderful
package can sit in the submission queue for a long time if there is
nobody interested in it beside the submitter. It is up to the submitter
to wet someone's appetite for looking at their package. Keywords
"self-interest" and "fun", not "importance" or "general usefulness".
I have noticed with admiration that some of the fellow developers
sometimes go through the submission and bug tracker queues and do a lot
of work out of a sense of duty. But in general these are outbursts and
don't last very long. We may be able to organize such outbursts
("tracker week") occasionally, but from my experience any idea of
organizing such things on a regular basis is doomed to failure from the
outset.
--
Martin
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