[forum] XFree86's Future and thoughts and suggestions

[Rob Taylor]

> On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 07:49:20PM +0530, Biju Chacko wrote:
> > On Wed, 2003-04-02 at 15:52, Egbert Eich wrote:
> > > Would a named list of maintainers make a difference?
> > > This however is no guarantee for speedy handling
> > > as maintainers may be limited with their time.
> >
> > I think it's fairly obvious that the current way of doing things has
> > been less than optimal. We all understand that maintainers have limited
> > resources (thats true of pretty much all of us).
> >
> > I think the current complaint is that patches seemingly disappear into a
> > black hole. I think the maintainers need to do *something* to
> > acknowledge patches, even if it's a one line 'Received. Will look at it
> > in the next month or so."
>
> You are aware that each patch you send get an ACK as return, as well as
> a patch number, are you ?

LOL.. Yes, you send a patch having tried to discuss how+why you're
implementing it on xpert, but everyone ignored you, then you get a machine
generated reply, then noone ever talks to you again....


Thats the problem that needs to be fixed. Hopefully bugzilla, suitably
policed, will fix the latter half of the problem, but I don't see how to fix
the 1st half - If the current set of main  xfree86 developers are
unable/unwilling to discuss anything with new developers, then there's no
process change that can fix this.

also, please, core developers don't reply saying 'we *do* reply to new
developers' go look though your xpert archives and you will find that
overwhelmingly this isn't the case.


So what can we do to rectify this?

One thing that comes to mind is that xpert (or devel as now known) is still
being used as a place where newbies log bugs or ask for config help. Its
purpose seems to be *both* for developing xfree86 and developing *with* X11.
I suspect this doesn't help, and rather than directing these posts elswhere,
they get actively pandered to!!

So my 1st suggestion. Lets have separate lists for the development of
xfree86 (devel) and for development with/setup issues with xfree86 (tech).
Any actual bugs that arise in tech should be logged in bugzilla, and then
they can go and be discussed on devel.


How does that sound to everyone?



Rob Taylor          mailto:robt@flyingpig.com
Flying Pig Systems  http://www.flyingpig.com
Tel:                +44 20 8280 9230