Re: CommitFest 2011-01 as of 2011-02-04

robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com (Robert Haas) writes:
> It does, but frankly I don't see much reason to change it, since it's
> been working pretty well on the whole. Andrew was on point when he
> mentioned that it's not obvious what committers get out of working on
> other people's patches. Obviously, the answer is, well, they get a
> better PostgreSQL, and that's ultimately good for all of us. But the
> trickiest part of this whole process is that, on the one hand, it's
> not fair for committers to ignore other people's patches, but on the
> other hand, it's not fair to expect committers to sacrifice getting
> their own projects done to get other people's projects done.

I had two interesting germane comments in my RSS feed this morning, both
entitled "Please send a patch"

http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=630

Where Lucas suggests that, when someone requests an enhancement, the
retort "Please send a patch" mayn't be the best idea, because the
one receiving the requests may be many times better at contributing
such changes than the one making the request.

http://hezmatt.org/~mpalmer/blog/general/please_send_a_patch.html

"On the other hand, Lucas, remember that each time you ask someone
to take some time to implement your pet feature request, you take
some time away from her that could be used to contribute something
in an area where she gives a damn."

These are *both* true statements, and, in order to grow the community
that is capable of enhancing the system, there is merit to the careful
application of both positions.

There's stuff that Tom should do :-). And absent the general
availability of cloning machines, we need to have people improving their
skills so that there are more that are capable of submitting (and
evaluating and committing) usable patches.
--
wm(X,Y):-write(X),write('@'),write(Y). wm('cbbrowne','gmail.com').
http://linuxdatabases.info/info/languages.html
Signs of a Klingon Programmer - 14. "Our competitors are without
honor!"