Re: Supporting my work on LilyPond financially

[Janek Warchoł]

2013/11/30 David Kastrup <address@hidden>:
> Mike Solomon <address@hidden> writes:
>> I would argue that the point that Janek brings up above is not a
>> healthy sign for LilyPond development.  Several developers, including
>> myself, have lowered their participation considerably over the past
>> two years.
>>
>> In my opinion, it would benefit LilyPond, and David too, if there were
>> more skilled volunteer developers working on the project.
>
> The main problem for letting skilled volunteers work effectively to the
> benefit of the project is the state LilyPond's code base is in.  Then
> there are the tools, and the work dynamics.
>
> If you take a look at
>
> commit 7d3d28de0ce6e2f018aff599cecd944d1754fe3c
> Author: Mike Solomon <address@hidden>
> Date:   Thu Jan 10 08:54:12 2013 +0100
>
>     Makes all side-positioning based on skylines instead of boxes.
>
> via the tracker
> <URL:http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/list?can=1&q=7d3d28de0ce6e2f018aff599cecd944d1754fe3c>
> then you'll find its core issue in 2.17.10, and followup problems in
> 2.17.15, 2.17.25, 2.17.26, 2.19.0.
>
> For one thing it means our reviews and the underlying infrastructure
> don't work out well when people apply them as they understand them.
>
> For another, it means that LilyPond's architecture is becoming
> increasingly fragile: improve one corner, and four distant corners
> crumble under unforeseen consequences.  At some point of time we are
> running into an equilibrium where any change will cause a chain of
> repercussions that does not really die down in a sane amount of time.
>
> When we arrive there, more skilled volunteer developers working on the
> project don't really achieve more.

Well, it would be good to do a Great Code Cleanup, but can we manage
such a task?  As you wrote, we need skilled devs for that.

> [....]
> It is clear that our development cycles have not worked out well.  It's
> taken probably 9 months at least from the time we wanted to go for
> releasing 2.18 to now, and it has been frustrating to people. [....]

Well, i was intending to start a discussion about this, but i thought
it would be best to wait until 2.18 is out.  Is it a good idea to
start it now?

best,
Janek