Re: More metaproblem

[Karl Fogel]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
>> "Eric S. Raymond" <address@hidden> writes:
>>> For Emacs to attract new developers, its code and the culture need to
>>> be discoverable.  As part of this, practice rules need to be *clear*,
>>> *documented*, and *minimal*.  Right now they fail all three tests.
>> 
>> +1 all over that.
>> 
>> For example, as far as I can see -- and I've looked, though maybe in the
>> wrong places -- there's never been a permanent sign anywhere, like on a
>> web page, telling developers when they should commit to release branches
>> versus when they should commit to master (trunk).
>
>See admin/notes/repo and admin/notes/commits.  What else is missing?

New developers are somehow supposed to know that those random files in
admin/notes/ are what they need to read?

What most projects do is have a development web page. linked to from
their main user-facing web page.  The development page organizes all
this stuff and provides links to source code repository, dev guidelines
& documentation, etc.

For Emacs, the main web page is http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/.

It links to two possible candidates for the "developer page":

  https://savannah.gnu.org/projects/emacs
  https://savannah.gnu.org/bzr/?group=emacs

But neither of those automatically-generated pages provides what a real
development web page provides.  Instead they just tell you how to get
the development sources and where the mailing lists are.  They don't
tell you to look in admin/notes/ (for example).

Compare those with develompent pages for projects that are trying to
make it easy for new developers to come on board:

  http://subversion.apache.org/contributing.html
  http://www.libreoffice.org/community/developers/

(both of which are easy to find from their projects' respective main
home pages, by the way.)

I hope the contrast between those examples and the way Emacs currently
is is sufficiently clear as to not require much elucidation.

Else-thread you wrote this:

> > For Emacs to attract new developers, its code and the culture need to
> > be discoverable.  As part of this, practice rules need to be *clear*,
> > *documented*, and *minimal*.  Right now they fail all three tests.
> 
> Feel free to contribute the missing documentation, and thanks in
> advance.

It's not just a matter of contributing documentation.  We don't even
*have a place to put such documentation* right now.

Heck, for all I know there _is_ a "Contributing to Emacs" guide
somewhere on the Net at this moment.  Maybe more than one.  What would
be needed is for the Emacs project to make it official by moving it to
somewhere under an official-ish Emacs URL, linking to it from the
obvious places, and helping to maintain it.

(I'm not volunteering to take ownership of that task, though I'd
participate in maintaining such a guide.  I only have time to do
occasional patching, and to write emails like this one that try to point
out specifically the ways in which the project is currently
developer-hostile and stagnating.)

>> Emacs is not an easy project for newcomers or drive-by contributors.
>
>Which large and complex project _is_ easy for newcomers?

Mozilla Firefox or LibreOffice, to name two off the top of my head.
There are many more.

Like others here, I contribute to plenty of free software projects.  As
it happens, I also study the development procedures of many more --
doing so is, in fact, my full time job.  Emacs is one of the least
developer-friendly.  I have time to explain some of the ways in which it
is so, though not enough time to explain all the ways.

I think the fact that several people on this mailing list -- people who
also have lots of experience with other projects -- have repeatedly said
so, should also indicate that most likely there is a bigger problem here
than elsewhere.  And the fact that we don't see a comparable number of
similarly experienced people making this complaint in the forums of,
say, Mozilla Firefox or LibreOffice, is further evidence.  (Btw, yes I
have actually asked about this among contributors to those projects.
See also, e.g., https://wiki.mozilla.org/Good_first_bug.)

>> (And somebody please stop me before I start ranting about debbugs as a
>> primary bug tracker even when email-enabled things like Redmine are
>> available, since it's been discussed elsewhere.  Apparently for the
>> Emacs project in 2014, "send email" is still considered an acceptable UI
>> gesture for manipulating a bug ticket.)
>
>I think if you dislike so much in Emacs development practices, you
>should become much more active than you are, and then you maybe stand
>a chance to start changing all that.

It's precisely that I don't have time to be more active than I am, that
leads me to want the project's development procedures to be more
conducive to developers like me -- there are many of them out there.

Look, it might be reasonable to say "There's an inevitable tradeoff
between being easy for new developers and being efficient for expert,
long-time developers, and the Emacs project has chosen the latter side
of that tradeoff."  That's fine.

But to deny that the project is difficult for incoming developers?  That
seems to me empirically wrong; as a simple fact, the difficulty should
not be in doubt by this point.

Embrace the tradeoff, if you wish -- I think choosing that side of the
tradeoff is a mistake, but at least it's reasonable discussion to have.
But claiming there is no problem, that the phenomenon is not real, does
not seem plausible to me.  For a widely used *programmer's tool*, that
is self-documenting and has an extension language, Emacs has an
astonishingly low rate of lightweight contributed development.

Can you help make your hypothesis falsifiable?  (In the intellectually
rigorous sense, I mean, not the "make it false" sense.)  I might be able
to find some time to do that.  In other words, can you tell me what
measurable signs *you* would look for to determine if a free software
project were stagnating, and then we can look to see if Emacs is
exhibiting those signs?  (For example: rate at which developers slow
down or stop contributing; relatively greater slowdown in rate of
acquisition of new developers compared to other projects; shrinking
diversity in first responders to bug reports; etc, etc.)

Committers sorted by commit count since 1985, in case it's interesting
(obviously doesn't count patches and many other things, so this is only
semi-data, not data):

  20572 Richard M. Stallman 
  10107 Glenn Morris 
   7395 Stefan Monnier 
   7099 Eli Zaretskii 
   6637 Kenichi Handa 
   6011 Chong Yidong 
   4803 Gerd Moellmann 
   4416 Juanma Barranquero 
   3767 Karl Heuer 
   3374 Paul Eggert 
   3320 Dave Love 
   3025 Kim F. Storm 
   1860 Miles Bader 
   1781 Jim Blandy 
   1511 Jason Rumney 
   1474 Dan Nicolaescu 
   1472 Andreas Schwab 
   1458 Juri Linkov 
   1421 Nick Roberts 
   1397 Michael Albinus 
   1390 Jan Djärv 
   1284 Luc Teirlinck 
    940 Jay Belanger 
    907 YAMAMOTO Mitsuharu 
    826 Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen 
    749 Pavel Janík 
    697 Martin Rudalics 
    638 Dmitry Antipov 
    615 Carsten Dominik 
    596 Karoly Lorentey 
    584 Roland McGrath 
    583 Thien-Thi Nguyen 
    518 Katsumi Yamaoka 
    470 Eric S. Raymond 
    445 Alan Mackenzie 
    436 Andrew Innes 
    435 Francesco Potortì 
    427 Bill Wohler 
    420 Geoff Voelker 
    407 Lute Kamstra 
    399 André Spiegel 
    337 Leo Liu 
    320 Colin Walters 
    317 Sam Steingold 
    312 Romain Francoise 
    299 John Paul Wallington 
    279 Vinicius Jose Latorre 
    273 Fabián Ezequiel Gallina 
    266 Xue Fuqiao 
    259 Markus Rost 
    254 Ken Raeburn 
    242 Adrian Robert 
    235 Simon Marshall 
    211 Dmitry Gutov 
    206 Reiner Steib 
    205 Lars Ingebrigtsen 
    191 Michael Kifer 
    182 Tassilo Horn 
    180 John Wiegley 
    178 Daniel Colascione 
    174 Erik Naggum 
    167 Stephen Berman 
    159 Bastien Guerry 
    152 Kai Großjohann 
    149 Gnus developers 
    136 Daiki Ueno 
    129 Steven Tamm 
    127 Karl Berry 
    125 David Kastrup 
    122 Robert J. Chassell 
    119 Masatake YAMATO 
    114 Edward M. Reingold 
    113 Roland Winkler 
    112 Simon Josefsson 
    112 Julien Danjou 
    111 Daniel Pfeiffer 
    110 Karl Fogel 
    106 Ted Zlatanov 
    106 Noah Friedman 
    101 Lars Hansen 
     99 Andrew Choi 
     97 Jan D 
     94 Michael Olson 
     86 Stephen Eglen 
     84 Teodor Zlatanov 
     83 Ulf Jasper 
     82 Per Abrahamsen 
     80 Tom Tromey 
     80 David J. MacKenzie 
     77 ShengHuo ZHU 
     77 Mathias Dahl 
     75 Paul Reilly 
     69 Agustín Martín 
     68 Joseph Arceneaux 
     67 J.D. Smith 
     67 Boris Goldowsky 
     65 Michaël Cadilhac 
     64 Kevin Ryde 
     64 Ken Brown 
     61 David Engster 
     61 Brian Fox 
     60 Fred Pierresteguy 
     60 David Ponce 
     59 Martin Stjernholm 
     58 David Reitter 
     56 Eric M. Ludlam 
     56 Deniz Dogan 
     54 Werner LEMBERG 
     52 Richard Kenner 
     48 Ken Manheimer 
     47 Rüdiger Sonderfeld 
     47 Deepak Goel 
     43 Magnus Henoch 
     43 Andrew Cohen 
     41 Bozhidar Batsov 
     40 Mark A. Hershberger 
     39 Christoph Scholtes 
     38 Oliver Seidel 
     38 Jim Meyering 
     37 Johan Bockgård 
     35 Dmitry Dzhus 
     35 Dani Moncayo 
     33 Joakim Verona 
     32 Jonathan Yavner 
     30 Peter Breton 
     30 Alex Schroeder 
     29 Vincent Belaïche 
     28 Per Bothner 
     27 Jesper Harder 
     26 Reuben Thomas 
     26 Ramprasad B 
     26 Christopher Schmidt 
     24 Mike Williams 
     23 Thierry Volpiatto 
     22 Michal Nazarewicz 
     22 Jeffrey C Honig 
     22 Aidan Gauland 
     21 Doug Evans 
     20 root <root>
     20 Michael I. Bushnell 
     19 Michael Mauger 
     19 Drew Adams 
     18 Phillip Rulon 
     18 Károly Lőrentey 
     18 Jambunathan K 
     18 Ivan Shmakov 
     17 Stefan Merten 
     17 Joel N. Weber II 
     16 Ulrich Drepper 
     16 João Távora 
     16 Christopher Zaborsky 
     16 Ben Key 
     16 Barry O'Reilly 
     16 Alp Aker 
     15 Ulrich Mueller 
     15 Rajesh Vaidheeswarran 
     15 Kelvin White 
     15 Ivan Kanis 
     15 Brian Preble 
     14 Rudy Gevaert 
     14 Marcelo Toledo 
     14 Fabrice Popineau 
     13 Stephen Gildea 
     13 Ian Lance Taylor 
     13 Charles Hannum 
     13 Aaron S. Hawley 
     12 Wolfgang Jenkner 
     12 Wilson Snyder 
     12 Seiji Zenitani 
     12 Lawrence Mitchell 
     12 Ben Elliston 
     11 thierry volpiatto 
     11 Melissa Weisshaus 
     11 Daniel LaLiberte 
     11 Dan Davison 
     11 Adam Sjøgren 
     10 Tomohiro Matsuyama 
     10 Michael Meissner 
     10 Kenjiro NAKAYAMA 
     10 Jan Tatarik 
      9 Ulrich Müller 
      9 Stephen Leake 
      9 Sebastian Kremer 
      9 Nicolas Richard 
      9 Jürgen Hötzel 
      9 Jeff Law 
      9 Christian Ohler 
      9 Bob Rogers 
      9 Antoine Levitt 
      8 Jari Aalto 
      8 Helmut Eller 
      8 Brian Youmans 
      7 Vivek Dasmohapatra 
      7 Peter Galbraith 
      7 Paul D. Smith 
      7 Matthias Meulien 
      7 Matthias Dahl 
      7 Luke Lee 
      7 Dima Kogan 
      7 Claudio Bley 
      7 Alexandre Julliard 
      6 Štěpán Němec 
      6 Samuel Bronson 
      6 Oscar Fuentes 
      6 Nathan Trapuzzano 
      6 Mark Lillibridge 
      6 Johan Vromans 
      6 Jim Wilson 
      6 Jarek Czekalski 
      6 Ivan Andrus 
      6 Fabrice Niessen 
      6 Eric Hanchrow 
      6 Eric Ding 
      5 William M. Perry 
      5 Vitalie Spinu 
      5 Troels Nielsen 
      5 Simon South 
      5 Santiago Payà i Miralta 
      5 Mohsen BANAN 
      5 Michael Heerdegen 
      5 Mario Lang 
      5 Kelly Dean 
      5 Kan-Ru Chen 
      5 Jonas Bernoulli 
      5 John Gilmore 
      5 Jean-Philippe Gravel 
      5 Jaeyoun Chung 
      5 Grégoire Jadi 
      5 enami tsugutomo 
      5 Elias Pipping 
      5 Eduard Wiebe 
      5 Andreas Politz 
      5 Albert Krewinkel 
      4 William Xu 
      4 Tom Willemse 
      4 Thomas Bushnell, BSG 
      4 Teemu Likonen 
      4 Sven Joachim 
      4 Satyaki Das 
      4 Reto Zimmermann 
      4 Ralf Angeli 
      4 Phil Hagelberg 
      4 Morten Welinder 
      4 Matthew Swift 
      4 Mark D. Baushke 
      4 Kazuhiro Ito 
      4 Karel Klíc 
      4 Jérémy Compostella 
      4 Erich Stefan Boleyn 
      4 Dave Abrahams 
      4 Darren Hoo 
      4 Daniel Hackney 
      4 Alex Harsanyi 
      3 Ulf Jasper <>
      3 Toby Cubitt 
      3 Takafumi Arakaki 
      3 Simon Leinen 
      3 Sergio Durigan Junior 
      3 Ray Blaak 
      3 Ralph Schleicher 
      3 Per Starbäck 
      3 Óscar Fuentes 
      3 MON KEY 
      3 Mike Lamb 
      3 Michael Witten 
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      3 Ken Olum 
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      3 gnulists <gnulists>
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      2 Sylvain Chouleur 
      2 Steve Morningthunder 
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      2 Ron Schnell 
      2 Rob Browning 
      2 Richard Copley 
      2 Phil Sainty 
      2 Peter Oliver 
      2 Peter O'Gorman 
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      2 OKAZAKI Tetsurou 
      2 Nobuyoshi Nakada 
      2 Nix 
      2 Nicolas Avrutin 
      2 Nguyen Thai Ngoc Duy 
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      2 Eyal Lotem 
      2 E Sabof 
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      2 Ed Reingold 
      2 Dmitry Kurochkin 
      2 Didier Verna 
      2 David Röthlisberger 
      2 Daniel Dehennin 
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      2 Barry A. Warsaw 
      2 Alex Ott 
      2 Aleksei Gusev 
      2 Alan Schmitt 
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      1 Йордан Миладинов 
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      1 Yuya Nishihara 
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      1 Olof Ohlsson Sax 
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      1 Ognyan Kulev 
      1 oblique 
      1 Noam Postavsky 
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      1 Nic Ferrier 
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      1 Julian Scheid 
      1 Juergen Hoetzel 
      1 Jose Marino 
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      1 Jonathan Rockway 
      1 Jonathan Marchand 
      1 John Yates 
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      1 Joe Vornehm Jr. 
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      1 Joel Ray Holveck 
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