Hello Derby-dev, I'm writing to point out an experience which discouraged me about growing our community with new contributors.
Recently I submitted a patch for a JUnit test. I have contributed very few patches in the form of code to Derby (I've had just a couple for the Eclipse plug-ins.) I am not a Java developer by trade or training, but I have contributed to the Derby community by writing articles, sample applications and some wiki entries. My JUnit contribution received comments by two different folks. I believe that some of the comments were valid and helpful to me to improve my programming skills and also to help insure that the test I wrote was readable and understandable, as well as to fit into the constraints that JUnit imposes as well as the Derby test harness. However, I feel that some of the comments were more style-related or were nits that the individual reviewer had. This is where I feel discouraged. One of the biggest goals I think we have is to embrace contributors (and therefore their contributions) and to guide them where it is necessary, but also to accept contributions that represent "incremental work." Also, I think when someone makes a contribution it has something to do with that individuals "itch". In this case I thought it would be fun to learn JUnit and become more familiar with the Derby test harness, and that was my itch. I am fortunate in that I am paid to work on Derby, but I think of other individuals who are not paid to work on Derby. If they make a contribution which is not accepted, partially due to style issues, how likely are we to get new contributors? Again, I'm not saying that I wrote the perfect test and others are not welcome to comment on my code, but on the other hand if we make the barrier to contribute (and it was just a test!) this high, how likely are we to get contributions from individuals who have a lesser stake in Derby than their own livelihood? Thanks, Susan
