[OpenLayers-Dev] Are there enough OpenLayers committers? (Was Re: Different lon and lat map resolution (and other issues))

Fri Nov 2 18:40:24 EDT 2007

Hi,

thanks for this comprehensive explanation. I would like only add this
small comment: In GRASS, more then 30 developers do have cvs write
access. It works. People are respecting each other's work, if somebody
breaks something, the change can be reverted (but this does not happen
too often). It just speeds up the development.

I do not want to say, that OpenLayers should go the same direction, as
GRASS does. Maybe you could just trust people more - they usually do not
abuse their power.

Just to clarify (or make sure) this: I do not ask for trunk write access
- it might look so. I'm asking for more feedback. But now, I can see,
that I just came in wrong time with my changes (and others changes too).

So, thanks again, I'll do my best in the future, to get the patches
setuped better.

Have a nice weekend

Jachym

Christopher Schmidt píše v Pá 02. 11. 2007 v 14:44 -0400:
> On Fri, Nov 02, 2007 at 06:37:43PM +0100, Jachym Cepicky wrote:
> > But the discussion went too concrete now. General question is: Do you
> > think, current system is all right? Are there enough reviewers, who are
> > checking the tracker regularly and communicating with the contributors?
> > 
> > As you probably understand: I do not think so.
> 
> First, let me state that I feel that no project can *ever* have enough
> committers. There are always going to be more people writing patches
> than there are people working to integrate them into the trunk codebase,
> because writing patches is easy, and writing *good* patches -- or taking
> patches and making them good patches -- is hard.
> 
> Currently, the OpenLayers 'trunk' committers list is a list of people
> who have demonstrated, via their code, documentation, and bug management
> to be competent developers on the OpenLayers codebase.
> 
> Those committers -- myself, Erik, Eric, Tim, Schuyler, Paul -- are the
> ones who have routinely demonstrated a deep knowledge of OpenLayers, as
> well as communicating regularly with the community what they are doing,
> and why they are doing it.
> 
> Each of these contributors -- with the exception of myself, Erik, and
> Schuyler, as co-founders of the project -- went through exactly what you
> are going through. They wrote patches, did work, communicated with the
> developer community, and established whether there was a reason for the
> work they had done to be integrated into trunk.
> 
> Tim worked for several months writing patches and code before commit
> access was offered to him. Eric has made more than a dozen patches, and
> offered commentary on other existing patches (which is a large part of
> what why I proposed he originally be given commit access). Building up a
> relationship of understanding of the community as well as trust in 
> judgement is an important factor in whether someone is given commit
> access to the trunk of OpenLayers.
> 
> At this time, there are relatively few other members of the OpenLayers
> community who have demonstrated that level of communication, and the
> level of judgement, neccesary to make me personally feel comfortable
> with granting commit access to them. (There are a couple who are very
> close, but have a couple things that would cause me to hesitate.)
> 
> At this point in time, I think that many of us are recovering from 2.5.
> It was a long, hard release on me personally, and since then, I've been
> getting back into other things more so than OpenLayers. (I've been
> developing some stuff for OpenStreetMap, for example, or putting
> together things like http://hypercube.telascience.org/fire/ .) I know
> that Erik has been working on a release here at MC, and I'm assuming
> that Eric has been working at least in part on MapFish. 
> 
> We all have jobs. None of us work on OpenLayers full time, and lately
> even the 20% time that some of us got is shrinking.
> 
> I think that it's a shame that there aren't more organizations who have
> the ability to invest in OpenLayers. If we had more funds, we might be
> able to free up some developer time to work on maintainence. (Might -- 
> right now, I know that even if someone tossed a bag of cash at me, we
> still wouldn't have a solution to the problem. Well, depending on the
> size of the bag :)) However, that's the case. We have no paid staff, and
> I've seen no one else who has enough experience with the project to
> trust them with commit access popping up who is causing me to wish I had
> the bags of money.
> 
> With that in mind, all I can say is that we're doing our best. I've
> pushed a lot of development forward, and right now, I'm taking a break
> because I need to recharge. At some point, I will pick it back up, and
> when I do, I will review other patches. When others catch my eye --
> others who have an intimate knowledge of the project dedicated through
> long-term interest demonstrated by continued conversation with the
> community and effort across various bugs to review, help fix, and so on
> -- I will absolutely take on a goal of helping them hone their skills to
> become trunk comitters.
> 
> Anyone who is only pursuing their own patches is unlikely to become a
> core committer. Not because I have anything against that type of
> development -- it's very important to have patches come back, and it is
> unfortunate that we don't have unlimited resources to integrate them
> all. They will not become a core committer because by only working with
> your own code, it is not possible to gain a thorough understanding of
> the OpenLayers code base. That takes a lot of time, and a lot of effort
> on the part of a contributor, and to build up a lot of trust.
> 
> Trunk is pretty sacred. We try very hard to not put anything in there
> that might break other people's code -- either with regressions or
> anything else. That means that committers to trunk are trusted to a
> great extent to know what changes they're making that might have affects
> on other parts of the code base, and that knowledge can only be gained
> through practice.
> 
> I'm hopeful that as time goes on, more widespread participation
> throughout the  OpenLayers developer community will lead to more trunk
> committers, and as that happens, we will have a more healthy and rapid
> development project. Until that happens, we continue to move along --
> reviewing the patches that are highest gain for the project, in an
> attempt to build something that everyone can use with the resources we
> have.
> 
> Regards,
-- 
Jachym Cepicky
e-mail: jachym.cepicky at gmail.com
URL: http://les-ejk.cz
GPG: http://www.les-ejk.cz/pgp/jachym_cepicky-gpg.pub

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