Welcome Jonathan! Better late than never :)
Jonathan Revusky wrote:
I think here we have to agree to disagree. I see there being a
responsibility involved that you don't. It isn't like anyone can just
come along and contribute, contrary to what we might want people to
believe, because there is a barrier to entry, namely those already
involved. AND THAT IS FINE. In fact, it *has* to be that way because
the alternative is just opening up commit privileges to SVN to anyone
and everyone, and clearly *that* isn't a good idea :)
You say this as if it is the most obvious thing in the world. But is it?
I am quite skeptical. You take as a given that commit privileges have to
be closely guarded, like a high priesthood guards the inner sanctum.
Yes, I do think it has to be guarded. I can think of two good reasons:
outright malice and bad code.
I am inclined to believe there are some people who would actively try to
corrupt the code in some way simply because they have an axe to grind
with the project. This could be very subtle, maybe introducing pieces
of license-incompatible code. I don't imagine this would be
wide-spread, I think the majority of people would behave themselves just
fine, but to ignore the bad parts of human nature would be folly, and I
think given the opportunity to add anything they wanted, the bad part
would surface at some point.
There could also be innocent mistakes made, like committing things that
you think are license-compatible that really aren't. This could happen
at any time obviously, but if you guard the commit rights, my hope is
that you only grant the rights to people you believe understand how to
avoid these mistakes more times than not.
Also, I think there has to be some check on the quality of the code
coming in. Especially when your talking about something like Struts
that a lot of people base big, important projects on, I don't think it
would be wise to let any Java beginner commit code without it being
scrutinized. There are better places to "get your legs" than something
like Struts. And plus, it is important to me at least that any
committer on any project have a basic understanding of the overall code
base, not just a small part to be sure the committed code fits with the
overall code base. I am not talking about an individual who makes a
targeted contribution here or there, I'm talking about a permanent
committer who can commit whatever they want at any time (subject to veto
by other committers).
There is a third reason too actually: does the code at least somewhat
jive with where the project is going? This was part of the debate all
along... there has to be a balance between being open-minded and
accepting new ideas, and just accepting anything that comes along. A
good example is the SetupItems contribution I offered last year. While
it doesn't represent a major paradigm shift or anything like that, the
fact is that with Struts 1.3 in the pipeline, and chain being arguably a
better solution to the same problem, it was, I feel, reasonable to say
that the contribution maybe shouldn't have come in. I thought it was a
good contribution, I in fact know a fair number of people took it and
incorporated it on their own, but it was kind of superfluous with the
chain refactoring coming, and so in a sense didn't jive with where
Struts was going.
What is the basis for really believing this? The idea, AFAICS (you can
clarify) is that if you let "anyone and everyone" commit code, they will
commit all kinds of low-quality stuff willy-nilly.
Yes, I believe this is part of the risk.
> My own experience
running open-source projects has been that the vast majority of times
that you give somebody commit rights to the code repository, they simply
do nothing -- good or bad.
In fact, my own experience would echo that. But I'm not sure that says
giving commit privileges is inherently safe... maybe it just says people
tend to get a little gun-shy when they are given extra power :)
> When they do something, they are typically
quite conservative initially since they are aware that they are new kids
on the block and the others are watching closely.
I agree, that is generally true. But would it be a good idea to open up
the repository to just *anyone*? That's what I was talking about.
Certainly some people wouldn't be conservative at first, they would jump
right in, and without some sort of vetting process you can't be sure
what will get in. Sure, you could always back it out if you had to, but
that seems like cleaning up a nuclear meltdown rather than having safety
regulations before-hand to avoid it in the first place :) (Sorry, just
watched The West Wing)
BTW, as regards the overall topic of discussion, I don't know whether
JSF will be the next big thing or not. I have not the foggiest idea.
OTOH, I do have an opinion about the Action/Shale cohabitation. My
opinion, looking at the Struts community and website and the rest with
newbie eyes is that this is disastrous. I think that any project has to
have some coherent message and a person who visits your website and
starts looking at the mail archive and so on has to be able to figure
out quite quickly "WTF is struts" and to have such an incoherent message
due to this Action/Shale bifurcation seems very negative. It just seems
complicated and confused.
I think it is fair to say you are not alone in that opinion. What can
be done about it, other than voicing the concern, I don't know. And
heck, those that hold that opinion *could* be wrong.
Well, to put it another way, if I were assigned the task of evaluating
different things in this space, and Struts was one of them, it is very
unlikely that I would settle on it. I would almost certainly end up
opting for a non-schizophrenic alternative.
I don't know how other people see things. This is just my honest
reaction. I have no vested interest in this.
I think it is fair to say that some people see no problem, others see a
potentially big problem. Aside from that, I'm not sure any conclusion
can be drawn :)
Regards,
Jonathan Revusky
Frank
--
Frank W. Zammetti
Founder and Chief Software Architect
Omnytex Technologies
http://www.omnytex.com
AIM: fzammetti
Yahoo: fzammetti
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