On Tue, Feb 08, 2005 at 06:16:58AM -0800, Jim Wilcoxson wrote:
> Hi - I read the entire thread mentioned below, and missed any mention of
> anyone saying the AS maintainers would not accept FastCGI.

Read the end John's 2005-02-07 post to that thread again.

  http://openacs.org/forums/message-view?message%5fid=263944#265126

> The other thing I guess I'm confused about, is that CGI is implemented
> as an AS module.  Why can't someone write a FastCGI module, and

This is a technical question, and once John investigates further maybe
it will out that all the FastCGI work he wants to do is best done
entirely in an AOLserver module, without any changes to the core.

But he probably can't KNOW that for sure until AFTER he's in the
middle of doing the work!  And damn, but what if when he's 80% done,
it turns out that all his work is useless unless he can get a few
small changes made to the AOLserver core?  The risk that those changes
might well be REFUSED regardless of their actual merit, is a serious
risk to anyone like John interested in doing such work.

And that is my main point.  The harder you make it for people to
contribute, the fewer people will bother to even TRY to contribute.

In any human group, whether a tribe of African hunter gatherers or an
Open Source project, there is some optimal point for how many
obstacles you force new candidate members of the tribe to overcome.

Too easy, with standards too lax, and you get herds of losers who muck
things up, do lousy work, and don't much care because they place
little value on their membership and status in the tribe anyway.  Too
hard, and only the obsessively perseverant bother to even try to jump
through all the hoops, and the project eventually dwindles and dies
from lack of new blood.

I suggest that reaching the upper echelon of "chiefs" or "respected
elders" in the AOLserver project - by which I mean those who are
allowed and encouraged to hack on the core code - is currently too
hard, not too easy.  Tone down the obstacles a bit, get a few more
smart hackers committing freely to the CVS Head - and I think we will
all reap the benefits.

--
Andrew Piskorski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://www.piskorski.com/


--
AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/

To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 
with the
body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: 
field of your email blank.

Reply via email to