Re: Simplify contribution by using user-friendly bug tracker and git interface

[Attila Lendvai]

> I'm apparently smart enough to install Guix as my daily driver distro,
> learn Emacs with Paredit and hack together packages, and then an
> email-based system filters me out...


i often feel that getting some of my (non-controversial) contributions merged 
is an equivalent effort compared to creating the contribution itself. that 
should bother any reasonable engineer.

and if someone feels the urge to dismiss it as just another inexperienced guix 
user, i already have non-trivial fixes in shepherd, and i'm coding for 30+ 
years, and most of it in opensource contexts, just not the GNU flavour.

and yet, i still remember the effort it took to send my first few patches to 
guix, and it's still a source of frustration even now that i already learned 
the necessary incantations. a lot of it feels like jumping through hoops.

such things always serve as "elaborate filters"; that part is inevitable. the 
only question is what gets filtered out and what gets through. and what gets 
filtered out here is mostly unobservable, while it has the power to make or 
break a project.

i'm writing this with two minds: as a very enthusiastic user, and as a 
reluctant contributor. the fact that this topic comes up repeatedly shows that 
i'm probably not alone with this split mind. the enthusiasm makes some of the 
frustraton observable (as opposed to silently walking away), which should be 
seen as a blessing here.

--
• attila lendvai
• PGP: 963F 5D5F 45C7 DFCD 0A39
--
“The most urgent necessity is, not that the State should teach, but that it 
should allow education. All monopolies are detestable, but the worst of all is 
the monopoly of education.”
        — Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850), 'What Is Money?'