Re: GOP-PROP 2: mentors and Frogs

[Carl Sorensen]

On 6/15/11 5:44 AM, "Graham Percival" <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Perfect example: two weeks ago, issue 1630 chord autosplit  was
> almost finished (it only needed a few minor code formatting).  But
> then it stalled until I suggested to Janek that he should get in
> touch with Karin 2 days ago.  Then suddenly stuff started
> happening.
> 
> I think the story of this patch
> http://code.google.com/p/lilypond/issues/detail?id=1630
> http://codereview.appspot.com/4490045/
> is a horrible black eye for us.  Initial patch sent on 2011-04-29.
> Janek said (in private email) that he could mentor her on
> 2011-04-29, but the patch only went on rietveld on 2011-05-07
> because he was on vacation.  A few comments, then nothing happened
> for two weeks.  Then a few more revisions happened, followed by
> another two-week gap.
> 
> This whole patch could have been done in 5 DAYS if we'd had our
> cards in order.
> - new contributor comes.
> - "welcome, here's the guidelines, ask on frogs or xyz for
>   personal help"
> - revision 1, comments for 24 hours, revision 2, comment for 24
>   hours, revision 3, patch review countdown 48 hours.
> 
> Instead, this has dragged out for almost 7 WEEKS.  Given this
> experience, I fully expect Karin to abandon any attempt at future
> bugfixing in lilypond.  Seven weeks for a 68-line patch?!
> 

This is especially tragic because the initial quality of the patch was very
high.  Karin is clearly a gifted programmer who figured out how to solve
this problem on her own.  Losing her potential contributions to LilyPond is
a real problem.  I hope we can change our ways and continue to get her
involved.

Thanks,

Carl