On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 1:46 AM, Andrew Lentvorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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).
I'm not sure if I read this correctly...but you conformed to their wants (demands) to get your software accepted into their repository, and thus distributed. Why go through all that work? If you rewrote rpc.lockd, and your re-written version was good, you should just use and distribute it yourself. You're the number one beneficiary in this. There's no reason to waste time getting it into the main branch...just e-mail it to them, and if it's good code, they'll use it. It's especially weird that you changed your code to what you thought was a bad idea, to get it distributed. Wouldn't you rather have solid code, filled with good ideas running on your own server, then code that's not-so-solid, with a few bad ideas, running on everyone's? Likewise, if you don't like KDE's unpolished look, you can polish it yourself and use it yourself. You don't need it to be accepted into mainstream...if there's one or two bugs that really annoy you, patch it yourself, for yourself, and distribute the code. If it's good, it'll be accepted into the main branch by other_people_who_like_your_work. The important part here is when you code on open source software, it should be for yourself first and foremost...and as a side benefit, you give it to other people. However, there's no reason to run into a brick wall a bunch of times, and navigate through bureaucracies, just so other people can use your code. Just use it yourself and be happy you've got a polished version...if someone asks you for it, just give 'em the patches. -- Nicholas Wheeler -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-list
