Re: participation & contribution [was: Latest changes with lisp/uni-*.el and leim/quail]

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@xemacs.org>]

Karl Fogel writes:

Good Lord, Karl, up to now it's been the usual suspects.  But what are
*you* doing joining the pig-pile on these guys?  You know how much
support work they do for this project.  I can only suppose you didn't
notice they in particular have been mentoring the Hon. D. Moncayo.

I've never understood why merely submitting a patch is considered an
*important* contribution.  A contribution, yes, but as often as not
patches from new developers cost a lot more effort from the core
developers than is provided by the contributor himself.  That has been
the case here.

 > What he did is normal & seen in lots of projects

Really?  What he did was to get commit privileges, and then repeatedly
refuse to use them because the VCS *he* chose is too much trouble to
learn how to use.  That's "normal"?

 > He (and others) objected to him being *criticized*.  It's fine to
 > choose not to commit his patch; it's not fine to flame him for
 > having different priorities from some other developers.

The objections are misguided.  His behavior is rude and deserves
criticism.  The circumstances explain, even if they don't justify, the
public flames.

Although the words flamed his priorities, the *reason* he was flamed
is that he is abusing the hospitality of Eli (and Glenn), who spent a
fair amount of effort mentoring him, without which there would be no
committable patch.  He repaid that effort by refusing to take on a
minor chore (committing his own patch), and justified that by
explaining how valuable his time is to him.