Re: improving our contributing tools and workflow

[Janek Warchoł]

Hi,

to make things clear: i do not intend to attack anyone personally, or
imply that anyone has bad will or malicious intentions.  I only want
to explain how the situation looks like from my point of view.

2013/9/26 Phil Holmes <address@hidden>:
> Janek wrote:
>>2013/9/26 Phil Holmes <address@hidden>:
>> > Good luck.  Let me give a Graham-style warning.  Don't invest any more
>> > time
>> > and effort initially than the amount you can discard without problem.
>> > That's
>> > to say - don't put months of work with the risk that the other
>> > contributors
>> > won't accept the change and all that valuable work is junked.
>>
>> This sounds like you're not going to participate in this.  Do i
>> understand correctly?  It also sounds very discouraging to me.
>> Janek
>
> I don't see why you would get that impression.

Because your message sounds pessimistic.  It sounds like you consider
it likely that my attempt to do something good will fail.  It sounds
like you are not concerned with ensuring that this initiative suceeds
and brings benefit to all, but rather you are thinking about the
damage and problems it can bring.

Thinking about problems isn't bad in itself, but if there's more focus
on problems rather than benefits, things get discouraging.

Actually, it seems to me that this happens really often in lilypond
discussions, and it's probably the main reason why people get
demotivated and discouraged.  When someone comes up with an
initiative, the reaction often _sounds like_
"oh no, another enthusiastic guy. his ideas can cause us trouble and
drain our precious resources. how can we save lilypond from him?"
instead of
"it's nice that you want to help. let's think how we can ensure that
this will indeed be a benefit for lilypond".
Probably the intentions of the people who reply are different, but
that's how it sounds like to me.

A few examples.  Keep in mind that this is just my impression (the
intentions of people who replied were probably different, but i cannot
read their minds), and of course not all replies were like this:
- lilypond blog: "let's not put it on the website, because it will
soon die and make us look silly. and it will introduce a security
danger."
- smufl: the reply to Urs' suggestion was mostly "that'll cause us
trouble and additional work, and we will be exploited by evil
Steinberg"
- "colorful make": the reaction was "oh no, it will complicate our
building process"
- snippets: the reaction was "we don't need this, and it will be
difficult, and we don't want to learn git."
- github: "changing our workflows will cause us trouble".

> I will participate as usual,
> although noting that my summer vacation ends this weekend.

ok.

> I was simply
> reiterating something that Graham said to me on a number of occasions -
> don't assume that the work you do will be accepted - it's always possible
> that anything done on a collaborative project won't be.  Patches are
> criticised, changed and occasionally junked, and the same can apply to
> proposals for changes in tools and processes - so don't become too committed
> and expend more work than you can afford to lose.  Ever.

Yes, i know.

best,
Janek