On Sat, 15 Oct 2005, David White wrote:
> I think that we need a change in the way that we do development to
> reduce the barriers to new contributors joining the project to be as low
> as possible. We have lots of people who look like they want to
> contribute, or are even trying to contribute, but not enough people
> actually become productive contributors.
>
> Thusfar in the project our 'policy' on SVN/CVS access has essentially
> been "do something to get noticed, and convince us that you could be a
> good contributor, and we will give you access".
>
> I think that this might be too limiting. Many potentially good
> contributors don't get noticed or offered access. So, I'm going to
> propose a fairly dramatic change: I think we should give SVN access to
> almost anyone who wants it, as long as they follow some simple rules.
My only question is, is this really necessary? In other words, has anyone who
has asked for CVS/SVN access been denied it? I am for a fairly open policy
of letting people who request access to have it, but do we really have a lot of
people wanting access? Yes there are people that probably should be invited
to get SVN access that haven't asked (Shadow/Wayfarer if he hasn't already),
but I don't think we should be inviting everyone that makes a bad attempt at
filling in a missing animation. If they ask, that is another matter since it
shows greater interest in being involved than just posting a picture on the
forum.
Perhaps a compromise rule of thumb would be to invite people after there first
patch/art/whatever gets included?
If we ultimately open the flood-gates and start inviting everyone into the SVN
repository, then I think more structure will be needed in the developer
organization to deal with the chaos of larger numbers. As it is now, everyone
basically knows what they have a free hand in changing, and who to contact if
they want to make changes outside their areas of expertise. I don't know that
this will still hold true if the number of people with access to SVN grows
significantly. I could be wrong however.
So I guess, what I am saying is, I think lowering the barriers to people
becoming productive contributors is good, but I don't think that we should be
advertising the SVN repository access as free to anyone who ask for it, even if
that is how we functionally operate.
--
-------------------------------------------------------------------
"In theory, theory and practice are the same,
but in practice they're different."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
John W. C. McNabb
-------------------------------------------------------------------
