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Nicklas Karlsson (nicklas DOT karlsson17 AT gmail DOT com) [via geda-user AT delorie DOT com] wrote: > > they just need the backing of enough of the community, and have > > the personality to cope with mediating / setting the project > > direction. > > Or just make sure contributed code eventually enter the official release This is a very tricky one, and indeed something I struggle with! The thing here is that the project has to live with that contributed code for a very long time, and in my experience the developers who create those contributions tend not to accept ownership of them, but simply leave, handing their code over for others to maintain once the code is included into master. If all contributions are accepted then the source code quickly becomes too heterogenous to be useful for further development. It becomes unmaintainable. If only perfect contributions are accepted then the project as a whole evolves much more slowly - but IMO also much more surely. One of my worries is that the software we spend our lives working on degrades rather than improves. That would be a waste of our time. I want to avoid that dearly. Releases are crucial to keep up appearance. The majority of people interacting with the software are and will remain pure consumers. There is an important but difficult balance to be struck between coding for oneself and coding for the needs of others. What level of selflessness should be required from contributors vs. what should be required from presumably longer-term maintainers. It is important to communicate expectations and requirements both up-front and whenever contributions aren't reaching the target. > and write down ideas on a publically available list. Yes! Gathering goals and making sure that they remain visible is also important. //Peter
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