On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Jos� Fonseca wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 15, 2002 at 01:07:45PM -0700, Mark Vojkovich wrote:
> > On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Lukas Molzberger wrote:
> > > On Monday 15 July 2002 01:46, Mark Vojkovich wrote:
> [...]
> > > > As far as development being stuck, no, I don't think so. It's just
> > > > that the people who know enough about anything to get things done are
> > > > very few.
> > > True, but there are reasons for that.
> > >
> >
> > The reason is that this stuff is difficult. We get so many college
> > kids that just learned C wanting to help. The help is appreciated, but
> > there are few things that they can do beside fix simple bugs and they
> > get discouraged. There's not much you can do about this. Changing
> > the project's mission statement doesn't make the work any easier. We
> > need people with years of experience either in graphics driver development
> > or in some other aspect of window system operation and that is hard
> > to come by.
>
> Excuse me!?
>
> The XFree86 developer page (http://www.xfree86.org/developer) says and I
> quote:
>
> "When requesting to join the XFree86, the most important qualification is
> not your experience level but your keeness on contributing to the project
> and climbing the uphill road to learning and mastering XFree86."
>
> And now a core member completely states otherwise!?
I am particularly addressing architectural issues. There is a
difference between saying that everyone can contribute something
and saying that all problems are easy enough for anyone to solve.
Moving the project forward in terms of innovation and features is
rarely done by newbies. I don't think it's reasonable to expect
someone with little experience to jump in and write an extension
to provide window transparency, for example. People ask why we
don't have stuff like that yet and it's precisely for that reason.
>
> > The fact of the matter is that dozens of new developers
> > with little or no window system experience are going to do little to
> > move the project forward.
>
> I couldn't disagree more with this. I'll give you my example - not because
> it's the best example out there but because it's the one I can better
> describe.
>
> I'm a mechanical engineer - my formation includes just an intro to
> Pascal and Fortran programming. My programming skills were self tought
> since my 10 years, but have very few things that I can show as programming
> experience proof. Not to mention window systems: up to this date I've
> still to make one GUI or 3D application.
>
> Nevertheless, after switching to Linux only on last October, I've study the
> OpenGL spec, made a developer's FAQ with all information I could gather
> the DRI, got CVS access, and together with another guy (whom background
> isn't also computer science but art) brought the Mach64 DRI driver from
> barely a draft to the point which is almost ready to inclusion in a
> release. This included getting familiar with CVS, linux kernel programming,
> the DRI architecture, X, and a almost complete rewrite of the code due
> the Mesa 4.0 architectural changes.
>
> According to your point of view we should have never given the trust
> that the kind DRI folks put on us since we had no experience. The fact is
> that we made the experience. And it is this trust on new people that is
> exploding in new developers willing to help (and actually doing so) on
> the DRI project.
>
> Ironically, for a couple of months I've been trying to join the XFree86
> developer team but after all this time this process still didn't
> finish... and every now and then one reads threads about how the XFree86
> developers can't cope with the number of patches and feature requests...
>
> I'm sorry to say that is the kind of attitude that you (and others
> like you) have towards potential new developers that is holding the
> XFree86 development down. You fail to realize that there is a thin line
> between the experienced and not experienced, and that those who do have
> the experience also have the power to quickly transform an unexperience
> yet motivated soul into an experienced one.
I don't have an "attitude" towards potential developers. I'm
just being realistic and I'm speaking from experience. Everyone
can contribute, but good intentions aren't enough to get all the
features that some people are asking for - we need people who know
what they are doing. There are two scenarios:
1) Newbie joins with plans to do big things. Finds out that this
stuff is hard and quits.
2) Newbie joins and does small things for a year or two and builds
up to doing big things.
Number one seems to be much more common than number two. I don't
know what we can do to get more people into the number two category.
That part you quoted on the developer page hints that number two is
the only route. Wait, I forgot one:
3) Newbie joins to post his wishlist to the development lists. He thinks
all of these things on his list are ESSENTIAL if Linux is to beat
Micro$oft on the desktop. He complains about why these features
(most of them very difficult to implement) aren't getting implemented
quickly enough and blames it on XFree86's "closed" development
model. Open source, blah blah blah, GPL, blah blah blah... You
know what I'm talking about.
>
> <dream>
> Give CVS access for more people, open up the development, close
> the closed development mailing lists, substitute the central development
> model for effective QA, incentivate people to help, and make sure their
> involvement is appreciate...
> </dream>
>
We need more people worthy of CVS access. You might think this is
an elitist attitude, but you haven't seen some of the patches we've
been getting. CVS access is granted only after a strong history of
good patches has been established. We actually do have a large number
of people with CVS access. I don't know how it compares to something
like Linux kernel, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was similar.
Mark.
ps. There aren't really any closed development lists anymore. Or rather,
there are some but nobody uses them.
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