Re: Quit [now definitely O/T]

[Graham Percival]

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 06:11:26PM +0100, David Kastrup wrote:
> 
> Kieren MacMillan <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > I couldn't agree more! [See Steps 1&2, above.]
> 
> I think that sums up very well why somebody would prefer not working
> with Lilypond.  Not only do you have to rely on expert advice, but the
> main advice is "please do what an expert would do, or shut up".

That's not quite it -- we're saying "lilypond is open source;
please help".  With varying degrees of politeness, depending on
how polite the original complaint was.

What else *can* we say?  We don't have the amount of developers
that people think we have.  For most issues, all we can do is add
it to the tracker and hope that somebody works on it sometime.  I
know that's not a very encouraging answer, but it's the only
honest one I can give.

> Now I am in the situation of being an expert _programmer_.  If you had
> actually bothered taking a look at recent postings of mine, you would
> have noticed that I am trying to get some functionality into Lilypond.
> There is little enough useful information to go by, there is very little
> advice on the list (Carl was the only one to give any pointers to
> repetitive requests for advice or reviews), there is no "big picture"
> you get for how to work which functionality in where.

Carl is in charge of the Frogs, which is the "developer training /
mentoring" project.  Of course he should answer.

Would it be nice if more in-training developers joined the
discussion?  Well, yes.  But they probably feel shy because they
aren't really certain about the topic at hand.

*shrug*  again, what else can we do?  Unless we kidnap Han-Wen and
force him to answer questions at gunpoint -- which, quite apart
from the legal and ethical considerations, is just plain *rude*[1]
-- there is *nothing* else we can do.

[1] can you tell I'm a Canadian?  :)


> But if there is roadmap, design and vision, I have not yet been able to
> find it in the obvious places I have been looking for.

The information for developers is the CG.  I have a rough roadmap
and vision in my head (assuming those terms mean "plan for the
future"), but completely lack the developers to implement it.  So
there's no point writing it down.

As for the CG... would you prefer it if Carl stopped answering
your emails, and wrote stuff for the CG instead?  Would you prefer
it if we kidnapped Carl, strapped him to a wooden board, and
whipped him until he wrote more CG *and* still answered emails?


We can't demand any more work than what people are willing to do.
I think we should *thank* the past/present developers for the work
they did/are doing, not demand that they work more.

I've done everything I can to create the organizational
infrastructure.  We have the Extending manual for how to program
lilypond.  We have the CG for how to interact with git + the
developer community.  We have the Frogs to train a new generation
of developers.

Are any of those items as complete, or working as well, as I had
hoped?  No.  But what else can I do?  I really can't think of
_anything_ else.

Other than kidnap + torture, of course.  I might vote for this,
but it strikes me that it might cause long-term problems... I
mean, who'd want to become a lilypond developer if they knew that
_they_ might be subjected to waterboarding in 5-10 years?

- Graham