Re: What holds the release

[Thien-Thi Nguyen <ttn@gnu.org>]

Juanma Barranquero <lekktu@gmail.com> writes:

> Do you have any
> trouble understanding that "given the different POVs about the
> relative importance of FOR-RELEASE items" do *not* imply that "people
> think they are all unimportant", only what it says: that different
> people have different ideas about the relative importance of each
> item?

it's natural for different people to have different ideas.  the question
is how to weigh the different ideas.  in the emacs development model, if
someone "claims" a piece of work and does something towards that goal,
then their opinions are of import.

if someone claims a piece of work but does not do something towards that
goal (for example, i declared i would add ``(current-column) => float''
support a few years ago but have not made any real progress [insert ode
to monospace fonts here]), their opinions on that topic are worth just
as much as the opinions of those who don't do the work, or those who say
that work should not be done, or those who don't even know of the work
to be done: very little.

as far as i can tell this is because, for emacs under the
maintaintainership of rms, the "work to be done" for certain areas
(e.g., release) is already decided.  perhaps under other maintainers,
that decision would be formed in a different way (e.g., w/ more weight
given to opinions of those who do not do the work).  trying to change
the model at this level at this time is fruitless dissipation of energy.
spewing forth (as i am doing now) is also a dissipation but i hope it is
not fruitless.

everyone chafes when they realize later a former misperception.  the
trick is now how to channel that (hopefully :-) momentary discomfort
into future correct perceptions and future useful actions.  of course,
one can go too far -- becoming an expert at misperceiving things -- but
probably only weird twisted people find themselves in that situation...

here, the common misperception is that understanding, agreement and
action are necessarily linked in the same manner as in other projects.
here, the reality is that if no one does the work, eventually rms must
do the work.  so really, we all have to ask ourselves: am i waiting for
rms to do this?  am i reluctant to jump in because i feel uncomfortable
as a non-expert?  will the mistakes i will inevitably make due to my
inexpertise be exposed?  can i handle that?  can ttn please just stfu?

probably all the answers are: yes.

thi