Re: GOP-PROP 2: mentors and Frogs - probably decision

[Jan Warchoł]

2011/6/22 Graham Percival <address@hidden>
>
> On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 12:11:36PM -0600, Carl Sorensen wrote:
> > I think that the implied obligation is saying "Mike will help people who are
> > playing with beam collision avoidance."
>
> Perhaps the word "expectation" would better express my worry.

Ah, expectations and obligations are two completely different things!
I agree that it will cause some expectations, but similar expectations
are caused by the sheer fact that someone worked on some piece of Lily
(which can be observer by his activity on -devel or in git log).
For example, i expect Han-Wen is able to give advice on virtually
everything - if he has time to look at my work.

> Suppose Janek says "hey, I want to work on frets" to -devel, then
> Graham repliesr to say "great!  Go talk to Carl, he's the expert
> on them".  Then Janek emails Carl personally (maybe cc'd to
> -devel, maybe not).

A conversation in this tone going on on -devel would not be
appropriate regardless of what i suggested, i think :)
In my vision it looked like this:
me: "i'm working on a patch related to frets, but i'm stuck here. Please help"
<2 days of silence>
Graham: "you may try to ask Carl about it, he has worked on them
before. He may be able to help you - if he has time, that is".

> 1. will Carl feel that he should reply because Janek cc'd him?
> 2. will Carl feel that he should reply because Graham said,
> publicly, that Janek should talk to him?
> 3. if Carl is busy and ignores the cc'd email, will Janek feel
> disappointed?
>
> At the moment, I see little
> evidence that emails to -devel are routinely ignore by people who
> would want to answer them but just didn't notice that email.  In
> the past 3 years, I can think of perhaps a dozen cases where this
> happened -- but with the PATCHES: 48-hours   emails and the
> GOP-PROP  emails, I think the danger of this miscommunication is
> much lower.

ok, i'll not argue with facts. I can only say that right now because
of GOP and other things majority of -devel e-mails goes completely
unnoticed by me; generally i only read those cc'd to my address. I'm
not a very experianced programmer, but if anyone would have questions
about basic metafont or something related to flags, i could help - if
i notice.

> Think about it this way: at the moment, we don't even have a
> smooth process for developers.  There's 33 outstanding patches,
> many of them by developers.  15 of them have been abandoned --
> about half of them were abandoned because they were silly ideas,
> but the other half are totally doable if only we have a bit more
> discussion about how to finish the job.  There's another 15
> patches that currently need work... maybe indentation, maybe a bit
> more architecture rethinking, maybe stuff that's actually been
> abandoned but nobody's bothered to mark it as such.

Well, ok. I won't insist on my idea (at least for now).

> That said, I want to treat people honestly.  If that means
> discouraging some new contributors, then let's do that.  Hopefully
> in 3-4 months we'll have the development process sorted out for
> developers, and then we can consider actively recruiting new
> contributors.  But it really will be months before we're in any
> position to support such a recruitment effort.

ok

> > > A question: are there (m)any people in the development team who
> > > started as developers right away, without being "just users" for some
> > > time? (besides Jan and Han-Wen, of course)
> >
> > Actually, I started as a developer right away, because I wanted guitar fret
> > diagrams.  It was only after that development that I ended up helping with
> > the documentation work under GDP.
>
> True.  In fact, a quick glance at the paconet lilypond stats
> suggests that out of the top 30 developers, only about 20% of them
> (including me) started off as "just users".

Interesting.

thanks,
Janek