RE: PATCH keyword, again

[Shaun McCance <shaunm gnome org>]

On Mon, 2004-01-05 at 07:32, Murray Cumming Comneon com wrote:
> > > > (Personally, I don't even think it makes sense for every module.
> > > 
> > > Do you have examples of any modules for which it would not 
> > make sense?
> > 
> > Any for which the maintainer says no; any for which 
> > specialised knowledge is required; etc. Sometimes, it just 
> > doesn't work. If someone decides that it would make sense to 
> > refuse inclusion of modules without multiple maintainers in 
> > Platform and Desktop releases, that's going to suck. Let's 
> > encourage it, but not demand it.
> 
> In the absence of contradictory evidence, I hypothesize that it would work
> for all modules, and therefore should be encouraged. I don't want to believe
> that there is any GNOME module which is so badly coded or documented that
> only 1 single person is ever capable of understanding it enough. That would
> quickly be a completely unmaintainable module.

Contradictory evidence:  I have a very hard time getting people to work
on Yelp.  It's not badly coded or particularly difficult to work on. 
It's just not a sexy project.  Let's face it, most of us geeks don't
read user documentation very often.  And people don't usually work on
programs they don't use.

So how am I supposed to get a second maintainer if I can't get a second
developer?  Are we going to kick Yelp out of the GNOME Desktop because
I'm the only person who wants to work on it?

I agree that having multiple maintainers is a good thing.  I know that I
don't always have the fastest turn-around on stuff.  There are a lot of
really awesome things I wanted for 2.6, and a lot of them will have to
be punted to 2.8, because I just don't have the time.  I would love to
have another person hacking Yelp.

But I'm very wary of a strict >1 maintainers rule.  I would hate to see
us kick out an otherwise-good program just because it "only" manages to
have one dedicated hacker who spends all his free time on it.

--
Shaun