This is one of the things about open source / volunteer
projects that may or may not be a good thing (it can be argued
both ways). Since people aren't getting paid to do grunt work,
if nobody steps up to the plate to fix an issue, it will either
just sit there forever, or it will fall upon Walter and Andrei
to get to it, which, given how much is already on their plate,
will take a very, very long time. And people will just work on
whatever interests them. Happy D users who don't find any
problems (for THEIR use case) won't have much motivation to
contribute to something that doesn't directly benefit them (or
they don't even use it). Unhappy D users who *do* find a
problem will either step up and fix it and contribute it so
that the rest of the community benefits, or they will choose
not to participate, in which case nothing happens.
I'm not trying to justify this situation, but having observed
how things work around here for the past many years, that's
just the way things work. Either somebody gets ticked off
enough to actually do something about an issue, resulting in
all-round benefits, or they just do nothing, and nothing
happens. (Complaining in the forums doesn't count, since it has
been proven time and time again that this almost never leads to
any actual change.) This is unlike how most commercially
driven projects work, for obvious reasons, and for better or
for worse, that's what we have to deal with. (Personally I
think this is actually a good thing, but I'm guessing many
people will disagree.)
So saying "wouldn't it be much more effective that the D
experts of this forum simply fix the open source code"
ultimately won't lead to much change, for better or for worse.
*Somebody* has to step up to do it. Expecting somebody else to
spend their unpaid volunteer time to work on something that may
not really interest them is, to say the least, unrealistic.
The solution, as Walter says, is to "be the change you want to
see".
I agree. And I must admit that from that point of view I'm indeed
part of the problem...
