Re: SmartEiffel shortcomings?

In <OFB7DB268A.BD2195F4-ONC125700D.00433CE2-C125700D.0043FC50@mpsa.com>, [email protected] typed:
> Roger Browne <[email protected]> wrote:
> > I wonder where SmartEiffel would be now if the team had adopted a more
> > open attitude towards outside contributions?
> 
> I wonder where we would be now if people REALLY contributed code instead 
> of already saying thay cannot because their code wasn't accepted once, or 
> even twice!

If they can't get their code accepted - or at least rejected with some
reasonable explanation - then they really have no incentive to
contribute code. The number of forks of SmartEiffel on sourceforge so people
could add features seems to be a good indication that people are
willing to contribute code to smarteiffel, but are having trouble
getting it accepted.

> I mean, go on other projects lists, for example the linux kernel. How many 
> rebutals do you get before having a *single* line accepted? And the 
> rebutals may be quite harsh, we look like white lambs beside of them (e.g. 
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.lsm/1063)

At least he *got* a reply. That's better than what I get out of the SE
team most of the time.

> So stop whining, roll up your sleeves and CODE! *YOU* are responsible if 
> your code is accepted or not. Not us.

I've had code accepted by the smarteiffel team. It's a PITA. First you
post the patches to smartzilla. After a couple of weeks of nothing
happening, you bitch about the fact that nobody has even looked at
it. After doing that two or three times, it may - just may - get a
response. More likely, the bug report will be closed with no
explanation of what was wrong with the code. Then you find a bug in
the original code, and get no - zero - nada - zip - none - credit for
having written the code in the first place. You have to go through the
same process as you did before.

Compare this to other open source projects I contribute to. Only one
project regularly has week-long delays in responding to patches - and
they acknowledge that there's a problem, and have instituted a
"review" policy to help deal with it. Others aren't perfect, but they
have enough committers that dropping a polite note on a public mail
list almost always gets a response. But if it's a bit of code that I'm
listed as the maintainer for, it's not uncommon to have a patch
committed within 24 hours of it being posted. My patches aren't always
accepted, but there's always an explanation given as to *why* they
aren't accepted if they aren't.

I used to spend spare time going through smartzilla, writing test
cases and patches to fix reported bugs. The lack of response from the
SE team to most of the patches I posted to smartzilla made me give
this up as a waste of time.

	<mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <[email protected]>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.