[QGIS-Developer] Bug #21460?

[Andrea Aime]

On Tue, Apr 9, 2019 at 10:26 AM Richard Duivenvoorde <rdmailings at duif.net>
wrote:

> I think Geoserver does a good job:
>
>
> https://github.com/geoserver/geoserver/wiki/Successfully-requesting-and-integrating-new-features-and-improvements-in-GeoServer
> And Ian's talk: (though it can maybe be polished a little):
> https://www.ianturton.com/talks/foss4g.html#/how-to-earn-support


Hi there!
Chiming in as this is an interesting conversation and it's relevant to
pretty much any "mature" open source project (the kind that has
developers that are a bit older, with a family and a job, and very little
and precious spare time).

What I wrote in the first article above should really be reworded to cover
not just features and improvements, but also bug fixes.
As others say, the reality is simple and "hard", core developers have
already a day job, that normally involves following up on contract work,
or project work, but not fixing random bugs for free, regardless of how
important they are.

Sure, there are bug fix code sprints, and there is a bit of spare time, but
both are time constrained and volunteer based,
that puts some simple filters on top of those activities: one does whatever
fixing fits the time allocated for the bug fixing, and
tries to fix as many as possible. Meaning, there is a tendency to pick the
quick to solve tickets, starving anything else that requires
longer development (or maybe longer setup), or just anything that one
guesses might be complicated (e.g., found in a area of
code that is known to be fragile).
The volunteer bit puts another filter on what gets done, given a choice of
hundreds of reports, one tends to choose stuff that
they feel comfortable working with. Personally, given two equally viable
tickets, I also tend to choose ones that are reported by
people that are actively participating, and skip/delay the ones that have
been reported by people that have been troublesome in the community.

Users might call this unfair. I say they don't understand a thing about
community driven open source... because it's not a faceless
service like, dunno, healthcare (which one has paid taxes for btw), open
source developers are people, not machines, and the free bug fixing
is a courtesy, not a service. As far as I'm concerned, those that do not
understand that or cannot live with it, can go back using proprietary
software, it's a better match for them (really, open source is not just for
everybody, even users need to have the right attitude towards it).

I use a lot of open source software myself. When something does not work, I
report. If I can help fixing, I do. If I cannot help fixing, I wait.
If I cannot wait nor pay, I look for an alternative. After all, the GPL
license is really clear on the matter:
"THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH
YOU. SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL
NECESSARY SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION"
Throwing one's frustration at the developers that shared code under the
above conditions, while somehow understandable, really does not make sense
and helps nobody.

I would like to see some "summary" document of sort shared at the OSGeo
level, as several projects have the same issues.

Cheers
Andrea

== GeoServer Professional Services from the experts! Visit
http://goo.gl/it488V for more information. == Ing. Andrea Aime @geowolf
Technical Lead GeoSolutions S.A.S. Via di Montramito 3/A 55054 Massarosa
(LU) phone: +39 0584 962313 fax: +39 0584 1660272 mob: +39 339 8844549
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