DJA wrote:
Todd Walton wrote:
On Sun, Jul 6, 2008 at 10:42 AM, Nicholas Wheeler
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I don't get it, why aren't there patches supplied with this e-mail?
Are thousands of stupid/little/boring problems fixable in a day?
Aww come on. I was actually impressed with the responses so far, but
what you said is a non-answer and the Linux community has gone over
this so many times with itself. "Put up or shut up" is not a reason
for the shortcomings in an open source application.
-todd
Sure it is. Maybe it's the most legitimate response in the case of OSS.
If things are as they are, then maybe that's the way the majority of
users like them. At the least, the developer is content. "Better is the
arch-enemy of Good Enough".
If things are not as you like, then /you/ may be the one most motivated
to get them "fixed" to your liking. Do it yourself; make suggestions to,
or file bug reports with the developers; hire someone; inspire someone.
You know, I'm kinda tired of this. People who say "show us the code"
have probably never really tried to contribute to a project.
I assure you, simply writing code is *FAR* from sufficient to get it
incorporated into the code base.
Even in the case of when I rewrote the rpc.lockd for FreeBSD in the
early 5.X series and it was very plainly much better than what currently
existed, I had to do a *lot* of work other than just "write the code."
I had to break it apart; I had to explain it to the person who was going
to commit it (Scott Long-who was both knowledgeable *and* pleasant--a
rare combination in open source--I got very lucky); I had to demonstrate
that it worked; I had to rearrange the code to meet what they considered
to be acceptable coding practice (multiple exit points vs. deep
nesting--in this instance the standard "multiple exit points" was a bad
idea and the "deep nesting" was the good idea--but I had to concede to
get it committed).
Unless you are a core developer for a project, any change, even a small
one, other than an obvious bug fix is going to be met with *major*
resistance. Sometimes even a *bug fix* is going to provoke hostility
because of developer ego.
"Show us the code" is a nice slogan, but it ain't the way open source works.
-a
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