Re: Efforts to attract more users?

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

"Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org> writes:

> Juanma Barranquero writes:
>
>  > Well, there were a couple times when I was in contact with him (I
>  > mean, I was really trying to help him get some code into Emacs),
>
> I don't know what it feels like to mentor Lennart, personally.  I do
> know what it feels like to try to get code into Emacs, *and I won't
> try it again*.

Well, I find it an awful pain to get non-trivial code into pretty much
any large project.  Problem is that the committer needs to feel
comfortable about it, or it becomes Somebody Else's Problem (tm).  And
the typical committer is quite more likely to feel comfortable about his
own code than about third-party code of similar code and documentation
quality.

Which does not serve to improve the mood of non-committing contributors.
Now excellent coding skills and excellent social skills are not
necessarily positively correlated.

For me, the consequences are that I try to get commit access as soon as
possible.  Not because I deem my contributions are of better quality
than that of others without commit access, but since the alternatives
are so much more wasteful regarding everybody's time and nerves.

AFAIK, however, Lennart _does_ have commit access and the skills to
understand and heed others' suggestions, but is lacking time and
motivation to follow through.

That's a pity, but it won't become less of a pity by fingerpointing.  I
don't see how social and technical structures could be amended to create
a better environment for getting the integration work done.

Things work as good as they can, given the current "human resources".
The results are not good enough, but it would not appear that anybody
has an idea how to change this without waving a magical wand that
changes what we have to work with.

-- 
David Kastrup