> The problem of long waiting patches is not unique to Django, it's a > common thing in Open Source. It's inevitable in any project where there > are less reviewers than contributors because people's time is limited. > Everybody understands it but the huge difference here is that people > should simply feel in control, they should know what happens to their work: > > - was it noticed > - was it reviewed > - are there any problems with it > > And this is what Django is now lacking.
I think this is also a near inevitable byproduct of rapid growth, and ironically, rapid growth can be the hardest thing to deal with in any business/project, whether for profit or open source. In Django's case, the explosion is even more pronounced because of how it started as a closed project ( I am not saying that is a bad thing, I think the ease of use compared to Gears is a direct result of this. ) So the shift from a small group of developers working largely amongst themselves to a very public project with a lot of potential developers "silently auditioning it" it has been particularly fast in Django's case. And this kind of growth always necessitates some hard changes for founders: - more delegation needs to happen, with resultant loss of control, a problem in any kind of management when companies grow - more of the upper management's time needs to be spent on non-code related task that only produce long term results, and that's not as fun or as immediately tangible, including: - more discussion ( online equiv of meetings ) - more human politics, getting consensus and harmony takes work and time - more documentation of seemingly trivial stuff, ie "yes we saw the patch, but so and so is looking at it and is away", more reporting to your community This is a perfectly normal scenario, I don't think the Django approach has been bad, I just think that it needs to adapt. We can find loads of examples of projects and companies that made that transition well, and loads that shot their feet off when they grew very fast and didn't want to change how they do things. Adrian et. al. have done an excellent job of hype and publicity. The result is here now, a lot of people are silently watching this list and the blogs and wondering whether they want to join development. Are we as a community able to adapt to that properly? Are we going to seize the moment or will we miss a lot of potential because we want to keep doing things the same way? So as compared to say the Gears scenario, I think the Django path has made for a more cohesive complete and working package that is much easier to dive into, and has been well tested. But that path also necessitates a greater change in working habits and dev policy when coupled with rapid growth, if the goal is to build a killer dev community. And personally, I think that's critical, *that's* what made the linux kernel and apache, but I can totally understand people having different opinions. More than one way to do it and all that. ;) Anyway, I'm glad that my post has at least provoked some thought on these issues, which was really all I was trying to do. Iain --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
