Re: Fully winding down my involvement in GTK+

[Stef Walter <stefw gnome org>]

On 07/22/2012 10:28 PM, John Emmas wrote:
> Your comments are absolutely valid Simon (as are everyone else's) but
> I fear we've drifted into a siding here.
> 
> The basic problem is that GTK+ has lost two very high calibre
> developers in a very short space of time.  

I wasn't going to comment, but here goes ...

FWIW, I too have felt awkward with the use of IRC instead of mailing
lists. But:

A few years ago GTK+ and Glib development was stalling. It has
experienced a rebirth recently. There are certainly other factors (GTK+3
is one), but to me at least it seems that one big factor is a new faster
paced development model which involves code up front, lots of review and
discussion in bugzilla, as well as communication via IRC.

There's been far more contributions to these projects recently. There's
been a lot less of: "Let's work around this problem GTK+ has (or other
library) with a hack in my open source project." There's been a lot
more: "Let's hack on the whole stack, and make it all really shine."

The life of an open source project are its contributors. The users (ie:
companies, dependent projects, and real life and blood users) are only
important to an open source software project because users can turn into
contributors. On average one in every N users to an open source project
will turn into a contributor. N depends on the type of open source
project, and the types of users it attracts, and also the development model.

It's always sad when developers can no longer contribute to a project,
no matter what the reason.

However this comes down to whether GTK+ has net gained or lost
contributors and contributions due the development model.

>From where I'm standing, it looks like it has gained contributions.
Perhaps it can gain even more, through a better development balance.

Cheers,

Stef