Re: On the subject of Git, Bazaar, and the future of Emacs development

[Karl Fogel <kfogel@red-bean.com>]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:
>    But then why do you think you still have the time & mental bandwidth to
>    make this decision well?  Why not delegate it to the Emacs maintainers
>
>Because more than Emacs is at stake here.

Let me rephrase to just: "Why not delegate?"

That is, you should either devote enough time to evaluating Bzr's
maintenance state to get a reliable answer, or delegate to someone who
can do so.

Since there are people here who have *already* put in more time & effort
to find that answer than you have (and than you will be able to, given
your self-described constraints), there is an existence proof that
delegation is feasible.

My point is not that the Emacs maintainers would do the investigation.
It's that they would rely on those who have been following Bzr more
closely than you have, and who have researched it in greater depth
recently, and make a decision based on what those people discover.

Instead, you're asking the maintainers to rely on your investigation...
yet you clearly don't have time to do a good job.  This is a poor use of
everyone's time -- yours, but also that of the other devs -- and does
not serve the GNU project well in any case.  The fact that "more than
Emacs is at stake here" just makes this even worse!

Another solution is for you to spend enough time to get a reliable
answer.  That would mean looking through the Bazaar mailing lists and
bug tracker and getting a sense of its overall maintenance state.  If
you do that, I will believe the conclusion you come to.  But you've
indicated you will not do that.  (I have done it, and came tentatively
to a conclusion; it could be refuted by real research from you, but not
by you getting a single answer from a single person about a single bug.)

-Karl