> If there are legitimate reasons to reject a patch, > they need to be articulated, at least briefly.
When Linus Trovalds rejects the patch, he says nothing. Doesn't even give the kernel contributer a hint as to why the patch was rejected. I have patches which were rejected by the AbiWord crew; I know why those patches were rejected. They did not have to give me an explanation; I did not expect one. I have a patch for bug 3018 which fixes the bug; but is not suitable for including in the main AbiWord tree. My first patch for bug 3007 was not suitable for inclusion either. Anyone is free to add a patch to the bug; if you sent a patch that was rejected by the AbiWord team, you can still attach the patch to the bug that the patch fixes. For the record, Bryce, I do feel that this is a legitimate bug which needs to be fixed; I have not found one bug which you have reported which was not a legitimate bug. That said, Open Source software devlopment works differently than proprietary software devlopment. With proprietary software development, all one can do is scream loudly before a bug gets fix. With open source software devlopment, the bug will not be fixed if the developers do not feel it is important to fix the bug; this is offset by the fact that anyone can quickly become a devloper for the project. If one is not a programmer, one can pay someone else to supply the patch. Another advantage of open source software devlopment: There is no line of technical support reps whose job it is to make it as difficult as possible to converse directly with the devlopers. When you reported a Linux kernel bug, you got a response from Alan Cox himself. If you reported a similiar kernel bug in the Windows NT kernel, you would get no farther than talking to a technical support rep, who, while being nice, would not actually get anything done. Of course, there are advantages to talking to a tech support rep. No matter how rude and uncivil the person is talking to the technical support rep, the person has an obligation, based on the values our society has, to be gracious to the complainer. With open source software, however, there is no obligation to stay polite if someone is being rude; the open source developer is free to respond by being rude to the complainer. Of course, any respectable open source developer will simply give the complainer a frank answer: "No". The complainer is free to continue whining after hearing "No". However, such whining will usually result in the complainer getting flamed by other people. Comre this to the technical support rep of a proprietary software solution, who can not, under any circumstances, give a whiner a rightful LART. But I am digressing here. Bryce, if you attach the patches to this list (given that the patches are small enough), I will put them on a web page of unofficial AbiWord patches. I even understand the mind of an open source devloper enough (being one myself; my project is MaraDNS) to understand why a given patch is rejected. - Sam _________________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? La emoci�n e intensidad del deporte en Yahoo! Deportes. http://deportes.yahoo.com.mx
