Re: Emacs author stats

[peder@news.klingenberg.no (Peder O. Klingenberg)]

On Thu, Apr 23 2015 at 23:10, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> To send a patch, you need to clone the repository, develop and test
> the patch, send it for review, update it several times according to
> comments, rebase it as master gets new commits, etc.  All of which
> involves the VCS, and so many people said they will not consider
> becoming contributors unless we switched to Git.

I am not a committer, but I have contributed a patch or two.  The basis
for my contributions has always been git-controlled.  Even before the
official switchover, I used the git mirror of the bzr tree.  I have no
desire to learn more VC systems than I absolutely have to, and these
days, git is a must for almost everything.  But had the git mirror not
existed, I'm convinced I could have muddled through the necessary
cut'n'paste to download the bzr tree.

What I'm saying is that, as a non-committer and infrequent contributor,
Emacs' choice of VC system was not a big factor in my decision to
contribute to Emacs.  Had bzr been the only choice, and had it proved
irksome to use, I might not have continued to contribute, but that was
never an issue, as the git mirror was perfectly adequate.

Compared to the hassle of copyright assignment, Emacs' choice of VC was
lost in the noise.  And I did not find the copyright process especially
burdensome, just a bit time consuming.  (What do we want?  Instant
gratification!  When do we want it? NOW!)

I was in favour of the move to git, because it seemed from the outside
like the right thing to do, but the impact on me was very close to zero.
And I didn't voice my opinion at the time because I felt it wasn't my
decision to make, in part exactly because I was not a frequent
contributor, and knew that the outcome would not influence my
contribution frequency at all.

The things preventing me from contributing more have nothing to do with
versioning systems.  It is partly that annoying thing called life which
my family insists I engage in occasionally, but even more, it's a
distinct lack of itches to scratch.  Emacs mostly does what I need
really, really well already.  So thanks, all of you!

...Peder...
-- 
I wish a new life awaited _me_ in some off-world colony.