José Matos wrote:
On Thursday 20 September 2007 07:33:25 Abdelrazak Younes wrote:
And even then, if you didn't shy away, or if you didn't loose interest,
you'll have to ask many times. You'll have to show that you truly
deserve the great honor to become a 'real' LyX developer.
Are you saying that have commit permission will change this?
Yes. It's like saying "You are welcome to contribute. We have a certain
set of rules that you ought to respect (coding style, ask for reviewing,
etc) but we trust you initially to be cautious with commit."
Having the key to house is a duty that encourage them to try to do the
right thing from the very beginning. It is also a way to say that we
value their contribution and that we are not an arrogant bunch.
If someone doesn't respect our rules, we just have to explain to him
what he/she did wrong. If he/she keeps not doing right, we just revert
his contribution. In practice, I am pretty sure this will never happen.
I am puzzled.
We always expect new developers to be cautious with commits, what is the
difference then?
The difference is that we don't scare off wannabe developers. I know for
sure that we have lost some actual, valuable contributors because this
secretive, restrictive policy.
You are right though that a quick answer from us will not harm, and it would
encourage potential developers.
What could help in this situation is to have proxy developers for different
areas that apply the patches. They could in a sense be called tutors if you
want to.
You are trying to put some organization in something that is
fundamentally disorganized.
In a sense the organisation of a free software like is not much different
from other voluntary organisations. I would be foolish not to learn from
their experience.
How come that other successful free software projects are not that
secretive and restrictive then? Couldn't we learn from them? You are
blocked by the mental model imposed by the centralized SVN way. Note
that SVN is just a tool we can be very liberal with this and other
projects do just that (KDE).
I have been working with other voluntary organisations for more than 10
years, from that experience I know that there are people with a sudden desire
to contribute the funny thing is that after some time that interest fades
away and no longer hear from them.
Or they may come back. And that is very fine.
Abdel.
