Re: Advantages/Disadvantages of Open Source Software (Was Re: Package grub-xen-host breaks PV domains with 11.5 point release)
Maude Summerside wrote:
>
>
> On 2022-09-14 21:45, Michael Stone wrote:
> > On Wed, Sep 14, 2022 at 11:16:00PM +0100, Steve McIntyre wrote:
> >> I'll be brutally honest: being accused of "possibly malicious"
> >> unwilligness is *not* a great way to convince overstretched volunteers
> >> to spend their time on issues.
> >
> > Especially when it's an ongoing pattern of discourse.
> >
>
> I think there's many barrier that discourage people from wanting to
> contribute to many project. I feel some developer use the community as
> unpaid beta tester but don't go further into accepting contribution.
>
> For sure, having managed some project, I have to say that it's hard to
> accept contribution that will add new functions to as software when
> these come from a unknown contributor. Not because of being scared of
> malicious intent (unless the person is really paranoid but that's
> another story). Simply because adding a new function means having to
> support it's ongoing development and there's no guarantee that the
> contributor will do so. Same goes on for code contributed that needs
> refactoring, that are badly documented, etc. But all this need some good
> social behavior from the project owner/manager.
I quite like the approach taken by Espen Jurgensen, project
owner of Owntone (formerly forked-daapd). If a feature is
requested and he thinks he might want to use it, he brings it
in. If he doesn't see a point for his own usage but thinks that
other people might want it, he asks the contributor to
maintain a fork for a few months. The initial bugs get worked
out by someone who cares about it, and then a pull request can
be made to bring it back to the main branch.
-dsr-
Reply to: