[Python-ideas] Iterative development

[Haoyi Li]

> You want to know what's going on? Get involved. Then you'll know

+1. It's odd to complain about the project's organization and processes
when you haven't actually had any real experience with either. Getting
involved in some project run by other people isn't easy, but it's not
really that hard either in the world of open source.


On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 11:36 PM, Amber Yust <amber.yust at gmail.com> wrote:

> I agree with you Chris, but can we keep religion out of this?
>
>
> On Wed Jan 29 2014 at 7:30:32 AM, Chris Angelico <rosuav at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jan 29, 2014 at 11:29 PM, anatoly techtonik <techtonik at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> > You start with people who have full exclusive rights and contributing
>> then
>> > compare them to people who are willing to help, but don't do this. Then
>> you
>> > remove the obstacles to include these people.
>>
>> There's a fundamental misunderstanding behind this, I think.
>>
>> Contributions are valued, yes, but the purpose of an open source
>> project does not begin and end at "encouraging contributions from
>> every person on the planet". The goal of Python is to be a useful and
>> usable programming language, and if that's best served by a single
>> person doing all the coding, then that's how the project should be
>> run. (I'm preeeeeetty confident that's not the case, though.)
>>
>> There's a general feeling around the world that dictatorships are bad,
>> democracy is good, and the more people you have involved in something,
>> the better. While this is not entirely false, it's not entirely true
>> either. In the Bible, in the book of Proverbs, God tells us several
>> times that multiple people's advice is of value. [1] [2] [3] But
>> that's advice, not decision making. When it comes down to a final
>> decision, it's almost always best to have a single person decide. A
>> business has a CEO, an orchestra have a conductor, there's only one
>> steering wheel in a car. And ultimately, trying to make every single
>> thought behind every single decision public is counter-productive too.
>> Ever tried to answer a child's "Why? Why? Why?" machine-gun? Yeah.
>>
>> On another project, I've contributed a large number of patches. Some
>> fix bugs, some add features, some just fix little typos in
>> documentation. All of them were simply submitted to the core team,
>> reviewed, and ultimately applied, rejected, or modified. I'm not a
>> core dev. I can't push to the git repository. But if I were to be
>> given that power, it would be for reasons of convenience (if the core
>> devs decide that all my patches are getting applied anyway, and it's
>> easier for them to let me push my own), not transparency. You want to
>> know what's going on? Get involved. Then you'll know.
>>
>> The people who care about the project will find a way to contribute.
>> That's a fundamental of the open source model. You don't like the
>> agreement that has to be signed before your patches will be accepted?
>> Then contribute by reviewing other people's patches, or verifying bug
>> reports, or whatever. Onus is not on the python.org legal team to make
>> everything work for you; it's their job to make everything work for
>> the PSF. I haven't looked into the specifics of the agreement in
>> detail, but I'm confident that the PSF would not demand something just
>> for the sake of bureaucracy, so I'd trust that there's good reason for
>> all of it. (And hey. if you don't want to sign that, you can just
>> declare that your contributions are public domain, IIRC.)
>>
>> I'm sure it's very American to demand that the people in power tell
>> you what they're doing. (Or insert any other country name there,
>> though I think the USA is at the forefront of this.) Trouble is, open
>> source projects simply aren't built that way.
>>
>> ChrisA
>>
>> [1] Prov 11:14 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs%2011:
>> 14
>> [2] Prov 15:22 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs%2015:
>> 22
>> [3] Prov 24:6 http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs%2024:6
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