John McNabb wrote:
My only question is, is this really necessary? In other words, has anyone who
has asked for CVS/SVN access been denied it?
Essentially yes. In the past people have asked "what do I need to do to
get access?" and we have basically given them a vague answer of "you
need to contribute something good, and then be invited."
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.
FYI we did actually invite Wayfarer, and he is interested, however he is
not technically inclined enough to use SVN easily. If we had more SVN
accounts, then even if he didn't end up getting access, it's likely that
someone who likes his graphics and does have access would take time to
commit them on his behalf.
Perhaps a compromise rule of thumb would be to invite people after there first
patch/art/whatever gets included?
Possibly. The problem is that it's often difficult to get something
included in the first place due to lack of people with SVN accounts who
take the time to review such things and then commit them. As well as a
lack of confidence among people as to what they're allowed to commit.
In fact, I think lack of confidence is a big problem. I would like to
say that if a developer thinks that something is an improvement that
no-one could possibly complain about, then they should just go ahead and
commit it. If a developer sees an animation on the forum that looks
good, and fills a currently empty spot, then just go ahead and commit
it. Don't wait for permission.
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.
We will possibly need more structure. Remember though that the technical
skills to use SVN aren't trivial. It's alot harder than, say, editing
Wikipedia -- or our own Wiki -- thus I think anyone with the technical
skills to get SVN access in the first place has already earnt themselves
a small amount of confidence.
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.
Perhaps we shouldn't say "it's free to anyone who asks for it", but
rather let people know that we are looking for more contributors, and we
want to make the bar as low as possible to become one, rather than
making developers an elite group that is very difficult to join.
David
