From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Richard Stallman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Efforts to attract more users? Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 08:37:06 -0400 Message-ID: References: <871vb9k0ob.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <87wrt1i1qt.fsf@uwakimon.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp> <83d3utt8ko.fsf@gnu.org> Reply-To: rms@gnu.org NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15 X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1278938246 22960 80.91.229.12 (12 Jul 2010 12:37:26 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:37:26 +0000 (UTC) Cc: lekktu@gmail.com, stephen@xemacs.org, lennart.borgman@gmail.com, emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Eli Zaretskii Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Mon Jul 12 14:37:23 2010 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([199.232.76.165]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OYIG6-0005HV-4p for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 12 Jul 2010 14:37:19 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:51928 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1OYIG5-0004sq-A1 for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane.org; Mon, 12 Jul 2010 08:37:17 -0400 Original-Received: from [199.232.76.173] (port=37247 helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1OYIFw-0004rj-RL for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 12 Jul 2010 08:37:08 -0400 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by monty-python.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1OYIFv-0005VC-H2 for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 12 Jul 2010 08:37:08 -0400 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([140.186.70.10]:58605) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1OYIFv-0005V8-AG for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Mon, 12 Jul 2010 08:37:07 -0400 Original-Received: from rms by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1OYIFu-0005J1-EA; Mon, 12 Jul 2010 08:37:06 -0400 In-reply-to: <83d3utt8ko.fsf@gnu.org> (message from Eli Zaretskii on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 11:20:39 +0300) X-detected-operating-system: by monty-python.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.devel:127101 Archived-At: However, I hope you will understand that making the necessary changes for a contributor who is unwilling to make them by herself is not a good policy in the long run, because (1) it's hardly a good use of the limited time resources I have, and (2) we will need to do this forever, as the contributor doesn't want to adapt their practices to some minimal requirements of QA and code cleanness. He even refuses to reformat his code as to facilitate the review! Deciding to clean up someone else's feature is no different, in regard to these issues, from deciding to write a feature. You don't have time to write all the features that someone suggests and that you would like. That doesn't mean you must make a policy decision between implementing all suggestions and implementing none. You see the suggestions and sometimes you implement one. You can look at other people's patches the same way. There is nothing wrong, in principle, with cleaning up someone else's patch. It just takes work, and it may or may not be the way you want to contribute. In the end, if a person refuses to reformat or adapt his own patch, that doesn't make it impossible for us to use the patch, but does make it expensive. Sometimes someone else will decide to do this work for him, but usually not. The refusal will surely result in few of his patches' being installed, and when they are, it will be at the cost of more work for the rest of us. So it will mean he effectively contributes much less -- that is why it is unfortunate. But we have no reason to treat it as all or nothing.