RE: Official sources vs. RCVS

[Cameron, Steve]

Karl Fogel wrote:

> But the majority of patches received don't fit these qualifications.
> This isn't meant to be some sort of off-putting, elitist statement,
> and I hope it doesn't sound that way -- the same thing can be said of
> 90% of the patches sent to 90% of the free software projects in the
> world.
        [smc]  Part of the (perceived) problem might be that for those 90% 
        of the patches that fail to live up to the standards, there is
generally
        not much, if any, constructive criticism, or that's been my
experience
        anyway.  Would-be-patchers are often just left in silent isolation
to 
        wonder what they didn't do "correctly".  (Not complaining, just
        explaining how it is.)

        As for Noel "living in his own world," well, his other choices are
        a) maintain his patch by himself against the constantly moving
        target that is the development version of CVS.  That's what
        I've done with my patch for the last 6 months.
         ( http://www.geocities.com/dotslashstar/branchpatch.html.)
        And that's not much fun when it's not clear anybody besides
        myself is using it, or has even looked at it,  which leads us to 
        the final and popular choice:

        b) forget the whole bloody thing and chuck it in the wastebasket

        I can see, if I were a developer of CVS, and bombarded with
        substandard patches that looked, in my considered opinion, 
         to have no hope of ever being "good enough", that the best 
        course of action might well be to "ignore them, and maybe 
        they'll go away.", because "talking to them only encourages 
        them." :-)

        Sooooo.. Option "b" looks better and better. :-)

        (of course I'm being a bit facetious here..)

        -- steve