On Tue, Oct 02, 2007 at 02:02:24PM -0500, Shawn Walker wrote: > Considering the excruciatingly slow process of making contributions to > some of the projects here, I don't see what would motivate folks. > > It seems relevant to me that the projects with the lowest barriers to > contribution (such as the spec files repository that the desktop and > sfw communities appear to share) appear to have the highest number of > external contributions.
I think it depends what you mean by barrier. Is the requirement for code review a barrier? Is technical complexity? Absolutely. SFE is attractive because, to put it bluntly, more people are capable of writing a couple dozen lines of what are essentially shell commands to produce untested, unreviewed software packages than are qualified to enhance a large, complex Java application or do a significant project in ON. That's never going to change. I'm glad that people are happy that SFE is easy to contribute to, but I also don't believe it produces fundamental value in the way that actually writing the software in the first place does. All that doesn't mean the contribution process elsewhere isn't needlessly cumbersome. I've suggested several times that SCAs should be eliminted, for instance. We all know that b.o.o is a joke and that the Hg transition is critical to our success. These are the kind of barriers that need to go away. But even without them, there will always be more barriers to entry in the more technically challenging (and more rigorously policed) areas. -- Keith M Wesolowski "Sir, we're surrounded!" FishWorks "Excellent; we can attack in any direction!"
