The Road to 2.18

[Christopher Hicks]

On Tue, 9 Mar 2004, Gervase Markham wrote:
> Christopher Hicks wrote:
> > Still!?!?!?  One would think after as many times as we've been around this
> > topic that some concensus might have developed.  The inability of the core
> > bugzilla developers to grapple with the desirability of custom fields at
> > this point is truly surprising.
> 
> Have you read Joel's article?
> http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020912.html
> That's a big part of the reason why some people are reticent.

A feature that may be abused and cause people to harm themselves, oh my.  
Maybe we should remove the unlink() call from the kernel, it might be 
dangerous.  People can abuse software in numerous ways to their own 
detriment.  That's no reason not to write software in the first place.

> > It's eerily similar to my utter
> > discouragement at trying to get an obvious one-line patch added.  
> 
> Bug number?

225221

> > The way
> > new contributors are repressed is unlike anything I've experienced or
> > witnessed on any other open source project.
> 
> Ever worked on Mozilla? ;-)

Nope!

> I don't think it's an acceptance thing - no-one's being excluded because 
> they are new. It's a time thing and a priorities thing - we have very 
> little time, and a set of priorities which may not be the same as yours.

I can sympathise with that.

> As my Bugzilla Etiquette document says, "Open Source does not mean 'the
> developers must do my bidding'".

That's not what I'm looking for and I don't think that's what the folks 
whining about custom fields ongoing neglect are looking for.

-- 
</chris>

No, no, you're not thinking, you're just being logical.
-Niels Bohr, physicist (1885-1962)