Re: [Fwd: [arch-users] Re: Gud lord!]

[Juanma Barranquero <jmbarranquero@laley.wke.es>]

On 09 Jun 2003 07:37:24 -0700
Robert Anderson <rwa@alumni.princeton.edu> wrote:

> Sure, and people could contribute if you read them the source over the
> phone as well.  That's all they would "need."  Would you contribute if
> that's all the facility you had?

I did (not the phone, the read-only access). Many people *do*, as I've
said. I know, I end commiting quite a few of these patches.

And forgive me, but the "phone line" example is a bit ridiculous.
Read-only access to CVS repositories is tried and true. It's not perfect,
but is not *that* bad.

arch, subversion, even BitKeeper if it was free, would perhaps be better
than CVS; I'm not arguing against that. Just that CVS and read-only
access aren't as great deterrents as you make it sound. Just take a look
at the very big and successful projects whose source control system is
CVS. Anyway, if I had to vote, I'd chose to wait for subversion.

> It's not optimal, and neither is
> working in an non source controlled environment for developing
> substantial contributions.

No, it's not optimal, and certainly I don't remember having said it was.
But even now there are people who does big contributions (I mean, not
tiny patches of 5-10 lines, but changes of hundreds or thousands of
lines) and who do not have write access nor (seem to) want it.

                                                                Juanma