On Feb 24, 2005, at 3:51 PM, Drew Davidson wrote:
I have been "invited" to join the Ant work by you and you alone. My posts to the Ant lists went either (a) ignored or (b) blown off in a condescending way. In neither case did I think that my help was going to be appreciated or wanted. I have critiqued the design of Ant in the past (both publicly and privately) and the problems that are part of Ant are not going away short of starting over. The retardation is genetic and not curable without killing the organism. But I didn't post this to bash Ant (I use it every day and it works for the basic tasks that I need it to do - it's just not gotten over that hump to the point where I can write a real build system in it). My point here is that the Ant community has a "view" on the way that Ant should be and no one will change their minds; they will either (a) ignore or (b) blow off in a condescending way anyone who dares to question the "design" of Ant. I'd rather not fight uphill that way. Plus, it's their project and if I don't want to use it then I won't; or I will use it and just stop pissing into the wind trying to change things with the way it's developed.
There has been some very dramatic evolution (to stick with the genetics analogy here) of Ant in the past couple of years. There were uphill battles that were fought to achieve those, but they are in and change the nature of how you write build files now.
The thing that bothers me in how you and John both portray the situation as "they". Them or us. Us is them, folks. You have to stick around to make changes. Dropping in to an e-mail list and firing off some complaints or even constructive advice and then disappearing in the face of adversity destines you to be ignored. If you feel strongly about change in a particular project, then stand up for it. If you feel strongly about change in your community, whatever that may be, then stand up for it.
Erik, this is something that is a continuing theme with you and OSS: contribute to the project or shut up about it.
I suppose that this is a reasonable, though not entirely accurate, summary. It's not quite accurate (about me) in that I welcome opinions and input. I went out of my way to solicit input from you and John about Ant before I wrote the first sentence in the Ant book. And I very much valued both of your contrary opinions about Ant. And I still do. The main point I make here is not to shut up about it, but rather face the realistic situation here. You may get lucky in that your opinions/complaints are heard and someone takes them to heart and does something with it seeing the light that you have provided. But far more realistically is that unless you actually do something about, you're complaining to yourself. This phenomenon is not because the people developing Ant don't want it to be better or that they do not see flaws, its that they are doing the best they can with what they've got and aren't nearly as smart as you to make the brilliant changes that you come up with. And "they" all have real jobs and real families too.
There are no Ant developers that I know of that are making their living strictly off Ant. And I can tell you most definitely that book royalties don't even pay to send my kids to school. Tapestry is a different story, though. It is run by someone who is attempting to make his living off of it, and has done a reasonably good job of getting it to that point where its possible.
First of all I don't have to contribute to something to have an opinion or not. I can be critical of anything, but this in no way obligates me to improve it.
I completely agree with this sentiment... though see above.
Secondly, my contribution may not help. Any project has people who are "leaders". If those leaders don't have a vision for the acme of the project (i.e. what's the ultimate version of this product?) then it is doomed to be a dumping ground for commit whores and those without a firm grasp of the totality of where the project should go, leaving an unorganized and ambiguous mess.
This changes the dynamic of our conversation. The best projects are run by a benevolent dictator, it seems. The creator of the project who keeps things focused and reviews design decisions with the totality in mind. I concur with that completely. Ant was written like that, but the creator of it ditched out instead of fighting to keep control. Tapestry and Lucene are both driven each by a single brilliant person, warts and all.
Leaving stuff out is just as important as putting stuff in (probably more so). If I jumped into Ant or Tapestry with both feet I probably would not be as big a help as I would like to be because I wouldn't be doing the architecture work that would be my most significant use.
You would be a huge help to Tapestry, that I can say for certain. For Ant, you'd be a trouble maker! :)
The bottom line is that I only have so much time on my hands per day and I don't feel that I need to have to pay (with my time) to have my opinions matter because I'm not a committer on a particular project.
In other words, you're satisfied to not have your opinions matter in these cases. However, you do not have to be a committer to be a "contributor". There are many cases where someone is deep into a project and contributes, yet is not actually a committer.
Erik
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