On 28.10.2003 14:40:29 Victor Mote wrote: > Jeremias Maerki wrote: > > > > For example, we could easily make Peter Herweg a > > > committer for the RTF libraries and renderer, but there is some > > hesitation > > > (even on my part, who thinks Peter does good work) to turn him loose in > > > layout until we know more about him, which takes time. In the > > meantime both > > > he and we must work more slowly. > > > > Normally, you don't just go and mess around in other people's code if > > you don't know what you're doing. I think it's a relatively weak point > > to deny someone the committership only because of that. If Peter is able > > to handle the RTF output I don't see any problem allowing him to do that. > > If he grows into the other parts, so much better. Even I have never > > messed around in layout, yet. > > This seems to argue against having regulated commit access at all. IOW, on > this same principle, everyone could/should be a FOP committer. Or, perhaps > every Apache committer should be a committer on all projects. I doubt that > is what you mean, but I guess ... I don't know what you *do* mean.
No, it's not what I mean. I'm strongly for commit access per project and for having to earn it. Peter is one of the few who submitted more than just one patch in the past year. Since we're looking for new people wanting to contribute Java code he's the closest thing to that right now. You yourself started with documentation and now you're deep down in Java code. I'm not against regulated commit access, I'm talking about creating an incentive for people to join. Serious people. I believe that FOP was too restrictive in choosing its committers but that's easily explained I think: There used to be quite a lot of them. But they all went away for whatever reasons. > The point > is that if all of us had to be proficient on all Apache projects before > being given commit access to any/all of them, it would take a long time to > grow new committers. That is why FOP's monolithism is a drawback. Also, even > if you haven't messed around in layout yet, you have discussed and voted on > (IIRC) layout-related issues. There is an expectation that committers will > have a "feel" for the project as a whole, and be able to contribute ideas. Yeah, but you should also be allowed to grow into these things. > It probably sounds like I am crusading for something here, but I am not. I didn't think so. > Jeremias's original comments about FOP's monolithism rang true in my ears. > Hearing no other proposed solutions to the problem, and seeing that mine is > deprecated, I humbly acknowledge that it is an unsolvable problem, or > perhaps no problem at all. That doesn't bring us forward. We've only heard three opinions so far. We've got 430 subscribers to this mailing list and not only committers are allowed to express their opinions. Then there's also the people that actually do things and the others who only talk most of the times (like me lately). Well, there are the others who never say anything but that's the ones who don't have any fun at all. And you have to filter all that's being said, because you can never convey all your thoughts to the mailing list just the way you have them in your brain. We've got the big problem that we normally can't sit together and talk it out face to face. It would be much more productive and a lot less tiring. This is no unsolvable problem. We just have to find the best way which may also lie in between opinions. One way may just be not to do anything at all right now or another to let Glen put his no-nonsense proposal to action until there is enough energy to do really clean up the whole thing. Let's not all get frustrated. It's enough if I am having to do Delphi 50% of my time lately. Have fun coding, do what you can. Jeremias Maerki (who blabbers to much)
