[QGIS-Developer] A plea: "fixes" vs "features"

[Nyall Dawson]

Hi list,

This is something which has been on my mind a lot lately. Whenever a
question comes up about regressions or stability, the argument is
often thrown around that developers are writing "fun new features, not
fixes".

I personally think this argument is a red herring. At best, it's a
misleading argument. At worst, it's side-tracking difficult and
important discussions with a point which has no corroborating
evidence, and offending contributors to the project.

Has anyone actually tested this argument? My gut feeling is that it
would not hold up to any form of statistical testing in any way, and
that the mutually exclusive choice between writing a feature or a fix
NEVER comes up in reality.

Can we PLEASE drop this argument, at least until someone does a survey
targeting the developers behind feature PRs, e.g.

"
If you weren't spending time writing this feature, would you have instead:

[ ] Just done my original task using alternative software or lengthy
workarounds instead, knowing that I'll have to repeat those
workarounds in future tasks

[ ] Ignored the issues with my mapping product caused by the missing
feature and supplied it to clients as is

[ ] Gone to bed early, and got a good night's sleep

[ ] Gone for a hike in the mountains, re-invigorating my soul with the
beauty of nature

[ ] Thought about going for a hike, but spent the time scrolling
endlessly through Twitter and feeling guilty and lazy

[ ] I was being paid to work on this feature only, and would not have
been contributing to the project in any alternative way instead

[ ] I had a mutually exclusive choice between writing this feature or
fixing bugs, and I explicitly choose to write a feature instead
because it was more enjoyable.
"

Until we have evidence that this argument is valid, I think it's
actually causing much more harm to the community than good. (It can
easily be mis-interpreted as "you wasted your time volunteering this
contribution, you should have fixed #xyz instead.")

Thanks for the consideration!
Nyall