May I +1000 what steve said, I'm all for a bit of digression, but this thread has narrowed the sematic gap between "to post" and "to smear".. Its just become some sick kind of dirty protest http://pso.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/pso1700/DIRTY%20PROTESTS.htm..
Mark On 3/25/06, Jonathan Revusky <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Dave Newton wrote: > > Jonathan Revusky wrote: > > <snip> > > > > I have no publicly-accessible open-source projects. If I did, I would > > not give commit access to anybody that asked for it, because I do not > > have the time to review the contributions of others and do not trust J. > > Random Coder enough to assume that they'll do the Right Thing, because > > in general, most people aren't very good programmers. > > The whole idea that, when you give somebody commit privileges, that they > just go beserk committing all kinds of code of questionable quality -- > this is just not something that really happens. I recognize that it > could happen. Also it could happen that you give commit privileges to > someone who is outright malicious. However, the latter would be so > infrequent really that, IMO, it's not an issue. If a wandering serial > saboteur -- the Ted Bundy of open source coding, if you will -- happens > to get involved in your project, well, I would attribute that to > inordinate bad luck, maybe like walking down the street and getting > struck by lightning. Possible, but so unlikely that it does not > condition your decision making. > > What usually happens is that people sound all enthusiastic about doing > stuff and then, when they have the commit access, they simply do > nothing. That is what happens easily the vast majority of times. People > overestimate the time they can devote to something. They underestimate > the investment that it is to really get their heads around the code. > > When people do start using their commit privileges they are usually > quite timid about it initially and initiate discussion on your list > prior to doing anything remotely controversial. People typically start > off doing very small localized things. And these things are not very > time consuming for the more established people on the team to review. > > One thing that would be possible is to encourage people to get their > legs by doing things like working on unit tests and javadoc comments and > so on. Most projects, unfortunately, have too little of both of those > things and letting people in to initially work on that is quite low risk. > > That would provide a way for poeople to gradually get into the swing of > things. I think that any people managing an open source project have to > be thinking about how to get new blood into the project. > > > > > Again, YMMV, and hopefully has! > > > > > >>>If you have, that's great, and I'm glad it's working for you, and I > >>>hope it continues to. > >> > >>It's not just working for me. It's working for a lot of people. A lot > >>of people use FreeMarker, you know. > > > > > > That's a pretty small sample size, but good :) > > Be that as it may, apparently it's infinitely greater than your > experience running open source projects. > > Anyway, this is getting sterile. I've made my point. It is my considered > view that this idea that the ability to commit code is something that > needs to be this zealously guarded is not well founded. > > Probably a project like Struts would benefit from drastically lowering > the bar to becoming a committer. > > The problem is that they've created this political structure where > they've defined committers as people with political power and > non-committers as people with no political power and so it has to do > with a certain clique retaining their power. It has basically nothing to > do with guarding the quality of the code. > > Actually, it is probable that being politically correct (less likely to > disagree with the current clique) is a greater factor in becoming a > committer than coding prowess is. > > Regards, > > Jonathan Revusky > -- > lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/ > FreeMarker group blog, http://freemarker.blogspot.com/ > > > > > Dave > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
