On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 07:14:33PM +0100, John Levon wrote: > On Tue, Aug 14, 2007 at 08:10:10PM +0200, Asger Ottar Alstrup wrote: > > It seems people have the priorities wrong. I think you need to rank > > efforts based on how much it brings thing forward per time unit, because > > LyX is chronically resource starved.
The problem here seems to be the missing consensus regarding the metric according to which "the thing was brought forward" is measured. My metric obviously differs quite a bit from Abdel's in this case. The big patch is certainly not wrong wrt to the "big view", yet I was much more tempted to revoke his commit rights than to commit his patch. [And the patch was wrong in details as we have noticed by now...] The second problem is the scale of your view here is narrower than it needs to be. If such behaviour was accepted it would set a really bad precedence. In the end we'd end up with more less capable contributors pushing for inclusion of huge patches even harder. Fending these of eats _our_ time. Saying "no" here and stick to it is my personal way to cut losses. And I'd actually consider the potential "negative profit" (which was not even realized so far) bearable given that the 1.5 cycle has attracted at least two new contributors that not only produce good ideas and good code but also know how to behave. [I wonder what makes _me_ advocating decent behaviour... Anyway...] Sure, LyX is cronically resource starved, but I do not come to the conclusion that getting any contribution actual in is a good thing taking priority over everything else. Things have improved a bit in the 1.5 cycle, yet there's no need to waste resources. SVN branches, however, burn resources. I said that several time, and just recently we had one case of "I can't be bothered to merge my branch myself" and a more polite request on guidance on how to merge branches - both indications that merging branches _is_ nontrivial work, and that waiting for a release being done and working for small thing on trunk after that might make more sense. > Which is why it's a huge problem when uncontrolled development is > allowed (see pretty much ever major LyX release, ever, but *especially* > the huge quagmire 1.4cvs got itself into). I come home and find myself in a parallel universe. I am really tempted to agree here. Andre'
