Re: removing spatial viewer from GWorkspace

[David Chisnall]

On 19 Jun 2010, at 20:49, Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller wrote:

> Good answer would have been:
> 
> I deeply understand that you don't want to spend your unpaid, volunteer time 
> on features nobody is using. But I am heavily using this feature for several 
> years  and maybe others. So, I frankly volunteer to keep these parts from 
> bitrotting. What do I have to do to help you?


I think we all agree on the bad answer - I don't think anyone on this list 
disagrees with Riccardo more often than me, and even I found that response 
offensive.  

I agree that this would be a good answer - it's really the only thing you can 
expect from any open source project.  If you find a feature valuable, then you 
must either be willing to maintain it yourself, be willing to pay someone to 
maintain it, or do something that the person maintaining considers valuable to 
encourage them to work on it.  

I do, however, wonder slightly about the phrasing of the question:

> It was added after a discussion on the mailing list long ago, it was a 
> popular opinion.

This is usually a good reason for keeping something, but then...

> However I think it doesn't fit the NeXT paradigm well at all,

This is not a good reason for removing it.

> I never use it

Neither is this - there is lots of stuff in GNUstep that I don't use, but try 
not to break just for the sake of it (or, at least, which I apologise to 
Richard about when I do break it).

> and it adds code in GWorkspace that needs to be kept from bitrotting.

Bit rot generally only happens when you make large changes to GWorkspace.  My 
understanding is that you are currently just engaged in bug fixing and making 
GWorkspace into something less of an unmaintainable mess, so bit rot should not 
be a big issue.  

The correct time to ask this question is when you've made, or about to make, 
changes that will make the spacial mode difficult to maintain.  If there is 
only one user of a feature, but it takes very little effort to maintain, then 
it's a bad idea to delete it - all that we do is alienate users for no gain.  

David

-- Sent from my brain