Re: development process

[Kieren MacMillan]

Hi again,

> Let's pick one person: Han-Wen.  He's said that he has a few hours
> to spend on LilyPond on Friday afternoon.  Would he prefer to work
> on resolving comments about his latest patch on scheme internals
> (or whatever he's working on) ?  Or would he prefer to spend time
> communicating with his "paired" developer, who's excited about the
> shape of the alto clef and wants to work on that instead?
> 
> I can't answer that question, and neither can you.

I didn’t try to, and don’t want to.

> Han-Wen is the only person who can decide how he'd like to spend his time.

Correct. I’m not suggesting anybody has to do anything they don’t want to do, 
or have any decision made for them.


My syllogism [on this particular focused topic] is simply this:

1. A problem in the past has been patches "dropping off".

2. One of the things that could help (and certainly couldn’t harm) keeping a 
patch moving forward is if every patch were [co-]signed out by a (i.e., at 
least one) developer who is capable of taking that patch to the goal line. 
Conversely, every patch signed out only by one or more developers *incapable* 
of taking it to the goal line is another patch with the distinct possibility of 
taking up (read: wasting) valuable resources (time in review, commenting, etc. 
by higher-level developers) during the process, and ultimately "dropping off".

3. It is worth discussing whether instituting such a system/restriction would 
provide a net benefit to the overall development process and experience.


If one of those premises, or the logical steps/deduction between them, is 
flawed in some way, please let me know. Also, if somewhere in those three steps 
I’ve suggested — explicitly or implicitly — that (e.g.) Han-Wen wouldn’t be 
able to fully make his own decision on how to spend his time, please point that 
out to me.

Best,
Kieren.
________________________________

Kieren MacMillan, composer (he/him/his)
‣ website: www.kierenmacmillan.info
‣ email: address@hidden