On Nov 5, 2005, at 3:25 PM, Dennis Clarke wrote:
I was sitting on some changes and was thinking about how to submit them and then thought, oh great, I have no idea what style is needed or wanted. So then after seeing this, an inside joke or something like that, I then felt "why bother".
Formatting code acceptably for any new project is indeed a barrier to entry. You can see my frustration with the ChangeLog in particular in the mailing list archives. :) I still think ChangeLog is stupid, but it doesn't get in my way much now, so I live with it.
The Linux kernel has other (non-code-related) quirks, such as the "Signed-off-by" line, and figuring out the appropriate person to send a particular patch to. All these things take some adjusting for new contributors.
Btw, if you haven't seen it already, http://grub.enbug.org/CodingStyle offers some formatting guidance.
Hollis was probably dead on the mark. Open source works just fine and constructive criticism is a good thing. I guess thats the whole point. On that note I'm going to pull the latest CVS and then have another look at a few things.
Glad to hear it! :) By the way, have you arranged to assign your copyright to the FSF? This is a legal barrier to entry...
-Hollis _______________________________________________ Grub-devel mailing list Grub-devel@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/grub-devel