Re: PATCH keyword, again

[Christian Neumair <chris gnome-de org>]

On Mi, 2003-12-31 at 00:20 +1100, Jeff Waugh wrote:
> <quote who="Christian Neumair">
> 
> > Actually, this mockery notably reduces code quality and end user
> > experience. Some damn useful patches are in Bugzilla since 2.2 or even 2.0
> > days and nobody feels responsible. So average beginning hackers say "I
> > don't write patches for module x, they won't be reviewed anyway".  This
> > mail is not meant to insult overloaded maintainers but to clarify how sad
> > the current situation is.
> 
> Perhaps it seems like a sad situation (or a "mockery", but I think that's an
> unnecessarily offensive way to describe it), but it takes a lot of work and
> TLC [1] to get hard-working maintainers to pay attention to your priorities.
> 
> But the good news is: You CAN help.
> 
>   * Summarise a list of patches that you care about and send it to the
>     appropriate mailing list. Making sure maintainers understand the
>     benefits and implications really helps if it's not in their field of
>     interest or expertise. Not everyone groks internationalisation or a11y
>     issues intimately - help them understand.
> 
>   * Send it again! Sometimes maintainers have an overflowing inbox, and find
>     themselves handling new mail only - if you resend your patch, a summary,
>     or a description of a problem (not every day, but in a reasonable time
>     frame), the maintainer is more likely to see it, or understand that it
>     is a serious problem. I can guarantee from experience on both ends that
>     this *does* get results, and maintainers will often thank you for your
>     persistence. Look at Patch-O-Matic in the Linux kernel community.
> 
>   * If it's a module you enjoy working with, or have significant interest
>     in, establish a working relationship with the maintainer. Help them out
>     where you can. Offer to commit patches after initial review, test things
>     out and provide feedback, and so on.
>     
>   * If you excel at the previous point, and earn the trust/respect of the
>     maintainer you may even have a shot at becoming co-maintainer or even
>     full maintainer if they feel you're doing a great job. This is not some
>     kind of sadistic collegiate initiation process - this is the circle of
>     life in Free Software! Get Darwinian on maintainers arses! :-) [ This is
>     great stuff if it happens, because it lets the original maintainer
>     concentrate on other things, and you can have the satisfaction / fame /
>     girls / sunglasses that are the hallmarks of GNOME maintainer success. ]
> 
> If the maintainer says no, well, not much you can do about that but appeal
> to a wider audience (such as sub-projects and so on). But it's everyone's
> responsibility to help maintainers get their stuff in - we have to help them
> out as much as we can. :-)
> 
> You said above "so nobody feels responsible"... *Your* energy can kick it
> off. :-)

Although I really appreciate that there are possibilities to qualify,
shouldn't maintainers *always* take a serious look at Bugzilla
themselves since this is an important source for quality assurance
information. It should never be neglected. Famous projects like Ephy
usually heavily rely on Bugzilla.
To me it seems to be a bit weird to remind maintainers of taking a close
look at Bugzilla, since I already to that by setting the PATCH keyword.
Just take a look at [1] and see how many patches haven't been reviewed.

regs,
 Chris

[1] http://bugzilla.gnome.org/gnome-25-report.html