Stalled custom field development

[Christopher Hicks]

On Wed, 30 Mar 2005, Joel Peshkin wrote:
> Actually, it is not paralyzed at all unless someone is foolish enough to try 
> to do the whole thing in one huge patch that will never land.

When somebody has an existing working implementation it doesn't seem at 
all foolish to wish that it could land.  The official process of small 
patches seems to be sort of like the Hippocratic Oath for software. 
While this is an admirable thought, part of the beauty of software is 
being able to break it and fix what doesn't work.  In the case of 
something like custom fields where it is the top-most-complained-about 
missing feature I would think there would be some wisdom in making 
exception to the official process so that the job can get done.  The 
current scheme of "do x, y, and z, and then we'll consider your patch" 
seems like throwing away a lot of good work that's already been done. 
The various retroactively prerequisite pieces can be done after the patch 
is applied without adding undue difficulty.  I suspect folks would be more 
motivated to clean up something that does something new and interesting 
than making patches to pave the way with the possibility of eventually 
getting new functionality.

Multiple folks have labeled this Analysis Paralysis and I agree.  It also 
seems to be a case of beaurocracy being put in the way of progress.  If 
slovenly following the process is more important to you than accomodating 
people that are trying to make significant important contributions would 
you please consider that there are alternative approaches that could be 
more effective?

-- 
</chris>

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