Re: JDBC 4 Compliance

Here's the way I see this from my POV.

First some perspective.

There are approx. 5 people actively participating in this discussion.
1000's of other people are happy just downloading the driver. In my mind
they are the market.

Now some reality.

I have been maintaining the driver since around 2000. Since that time
others have contributed greatly. Namely Kris Jurka and Oliver Jowett stand
out as people who have stepped up in a big way and in fact taken over much
of the work when I was unavailable

At the moment I am the only one left. I have never been paid for any of
this. I am not expecting to, but this reality means that I have limited
time to work on it.

Other than Kris and Oliver, there have been others who have expressed
interest in donating their time and effort, for whatever reason they do not
remain active.

In the case of Kevin's 10 month old patch Craig Ringer originally reviewed
that patch and I left him in charge of it. As a result it became stale and
Kevin decided his time was better spent writing a whole new driver.

In most open source projects people get involved slowly. Patches which
involve large changes to the codebase are not accepted by people who are
not going to take future responsibility for them.

Keep in mind that I have considerable knowledge of how the code works right
now. If I were to accept a huge change, then I become responsible for it.
Unless I see some continued commitment from someone how do I know they will
continue to be responsible for this new code ?

Moving forward. As I see it the number one problem is lack of resources.
Instead of opting for wholesale change the project needs resources. Someone
else to review patches, someone to work on the website. Someone to deploy
to maven.

Anyone feel like volunteering ?

Dave Cramer

dave.cramer(at)credativ(dot)ca
http://www.credativ.ca

On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 2:49 AM, Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnakangas(at)vmware(dot)com
> wrote:

> On 24.06.2013 20:59, Bryan Varner wrote:
>
>> * Initially when we contacted the list about implementing interleaving
>> we got everything from (paraphrased) 'it's a good idea' to 'if you need
>> it then you are doing it wrong'. Everything from our need for it to how
>> we eventually implemented was ridiculed.
>>
>
> The way I recall those discussions is that I was against the idea of
> juggling physical connections in the driver, while a few other people were
> generally excited to see you working on it without commenting on the
> details.
>
> I spent a considerable amount of my time trying to understand the problem
> you were seeing, looking at the patch itself, and crafting replies to you.
> I'm really sorry if you felt that I ridiculed you - it was definitely not
> meant like that.
>
>
> * I got the distinct impression that this project consists of an 'old
>> boys club' of developers who've worked on this project for a long time.
>> Outsiders seem to be treated in an almost hostile manner.
>>
>> * A long-standing contributors misplaced emotional attachment to their
>> code should not justify holding on to artifacts which go against logic,
>> reason, and current best practices.
>>
>
> Again I feel I might be responsible for these sentiments, as I don't think
> anyone else objected strongly to your patch. I spent a lot of time crafting
> my replies and I thought I explained my objections quite thoroughly, but
> I'm sorry if it didn't get across that way. Let me assure you that there is
> enough code of mine out there that I don't feel particularly attached to
> any of it. My objections were purely technical.
>
>
> * It seems as though the project is resistant to any form of code-change
>> beyond a trivial bug fix to existing code. This seems like a release
>> management failure more than anything.
>>
>
> I don't think there's much resistance as such, just a lack of Dave's time
> to review and commit patches. In fact, I get the feeling that trivial bug
> fixes fall through the cracks just as easily as bigger code changes - I've
> had a couple of my trivial patches linger for months, too.
>
> The problem is that there isn't many people reviewing and committing
> patches. Dave and Oliver are busy with other stuff.
>
> We have some people who pop up every now and then with a patch, but how do
> we get them involved in reviewing other people's work? How can we get more
> people involved in doing the boring, janitorial work of making sure that
> the driver works with supported all versions of JDBC and JRE?
>
> - Heikki
>
>
>
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