Re: Discussing issues

["Mike A. Harris" <mharris@www.linux.org.uk>]

On Tue, 15 Apr 2003, Kendall Bennett wrote:

>>    What's the matter with defining "large enough" to be "has made
>> significant contributions over many years"?  That sounds like as
>> good a metric as any, perhaps better than all others.  Though I
>> can pretty much guarantee you that by that definition the vote
>> would leave pretty much all of the current board and core intact. 
>> 
>>    This appears to disturb some people.  Why is that?  And what
>> justification do you have that this is not the best way for things
>> to be - with the people who have contributed the most having the
>> most say?  
>
>To answer that, let me quote something you yourself said so well a few 
>posts back:
>
>"While there are things that people have a right to demand - they have a 
>right to demand to be able to contribute..."   
>
>The above clearly outlines to me why "the people who have contributed the 
>most having the most say?" is clearly wrong. Just because you have been 
>developing XFree86 code for many years, what right do *you* have to 
>control what *I* can contribute to XFree86? The mere fact that such a 
>small list of people control what does and does not get into XFree86 
>means that mine and everyone elses contributions to XFree86 stand a very 
>large chance of getting lost. As you said above, myself and other 
>developers have a right to demand to be able to contribute, and IMHO that 
>is entirely what this discussion is all about.

I'm not agreeing nor disagreeing, but I would just like to make a 
few comments from the way I see things.

I think the word "demand" is a bit strong here.  I agree 
completely that anyone should be able to contribute code, and of 
course not have to ask permission to do so.  The MIT license that 
X11 and XFree86 are under pretty much guarantees that nobody 
needs to ask permission in order to use the code for their own 
purposes, or to extend the code.

Extending the code, either via new extensions, new drivers, bug 
fixes, other enhancments is one process.  Contributing those 
modifications and additions back is a different process that some 
people elect to do.

While anyone is certainly free to contribute code back, and I 
believe they're also encouraged to do so by all groups, there is 
never a guarantee that their code will be accepted.

Whomever is making decisions in the project (or any project) will 
determine wether contributed code is something that the project 
actually wants or not using whatever determining factors they 
might want to use.  Some factors might be code quality, 
readability, or they might be things such as wether or not some 
contributed code is actually considered beneficial or not to the 
project as a whole.  Someone might implement some major change 
which is far reaching and it stands to reason that project 
leaders might not want to accept the code due to the various 
implications it might have.

So I don't think anyone really has a right to "demand" that the 
XFree86 project accept their contributions simply because they've 
spent time implementing something they planned on contributing.  
That isn't really fair to the project to expect every piece of 
code out there that is contributed to just be accepted.

This brings up the question of "Why should I work on a given 
piece of code that might be large, and spend a lot of time on it 
without any form of guarantee that it will be accepted once 
complete?"

That is a hard one because it creates a sort of catch 22
situation in which someone might want to work on some major
thing, but doesn't want to spend 6 months of their time doing it
only to have it rejected in the end.  Also, if they are to ask 
about it or try to discuss it up front, they might very well end 
up getting a "show me the code first, it is hard to consider 
something that is only at the idea stage".  That also quite often 
isn't unreasonable.

IMHO, what this shows is that there are sometimes developmental 
roadblocks due to these types of situations.  One way that I 
think can remove the roadblocks is to have developers feel more 
at ease with openly discussing things they'd like to work on, and 
for other people to also be open minded about hearing them and at 
least discussing things, and preferably with a positive minded 
outlook from all parties.

Another case is one where a developer would like to get involved
and contribute to a certain area, but is just starting out in
that area, or just starting out with X development period, but
they've got a lot of questions and either aren't sure where to
ask, or they fear being treated as incompetant or inferior by
asking those who do know a lot more about things.

One of the worst things that can happen to a new developer trying
to learn how something works, is to be run down into the ground
for not understanding something the first time, or for not 
having magically gotten to some higher skill level in the 
particular portion of code they'd like to work on.  Some people 
have mentioned in IRC or in mailing lists that they feel 
discouraged from even working on something from not knowing where 
to get help, or from getting stepped on when they do.

Granted, everyone needs to have a bit of thick skin to be a
developer, but it would be nice to have the most knowledgeable
people in given areas of code encourage new blood so to speak,
and offering help/advice if they can (and if they have the time
to do so).  I mean this in a general sense of course, and not to 
any specific people or projects.

Take care,
TTYL

-- 
Mike A. Harris


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