Re: how to bring in new people [was: forwarded message from Satish Athreya]

On Thu, Apr 17, 2003 at 02:41:30PM -0500, Mark Linimon wrote:
> Keith Whitwell writes:
> > Unfortunately in my experience, emails like this usually end at
> > about this point.  You can reply or not, but whatever effort goes
> > into it is usually wasted [...] chances are that's the last you'll
> > hear of them.
<snip>
> But one shouldn't care.  One should, and even must, optimize
> for the case where it *wouldn't* be wasted ... if one welcomed
> everyone, arms open, instead of "only sometimes", and always
> arms-folded.

the people that will end up contributing will commonly have
had the sense to email the component maintainer with a patch 
or as a last resort, the mailing list with a url. the guys 
that turn up saying "i'm here to help", well, usually don't.
of course, xfree86 doesn't appear that nice place for even
past contributors, but, that sort of stuff will hopefully be
changing in the near future.

mvg,
Alex