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Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2001 10:49:23 +1000
To: ant-user@jakarta.apache.org
From: Peter Donald <donaldp@apache.org>
Subject: Re: Psychology and community.
Cc: ant-user@jakarta.apache.org
In-Reply-To: <200106051733.f55HXJ930236@smtp.ufl.edu>
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At 01:33 PM 6/5/01 -0400, asr@ufl.edu wrote:
>Responding "Well, submit a patch, then" to every gripe has several flaws.  It
>presumes: 

nope - it presumes the griper is willing to learn and help. Often asking
someone to help is fastest way to make them stop complaining ;)

>Additionally, it presents a tremendously arrogant perspective to the rest of
>the user (and thus potential developer) community.  It is much more work to
>deflect these gripes productively, but then that's why the prominent members
>of the team want to get there, right?  You want a better, coherent product,
>not some slapped-together collision of philosophies coded piecemeal by
>novices.
>
>.... Right?

Most of the gripes are for things that could be quite easily fixed up by
'novices'. Generally the pattern is;

Griper: feature X is not documented enough - how do I use it?
ant-dev: people explain how to use X
Griper never submits patch (or even tries) to fix process for other people.

>I've gotten and seen this response several times.  I'm trying to shut up and
>soldier for my own part.  However, I'm a bit intimidated by the ant
structure,
>especially as active as the development list is... and I consider myself more
>than trivially clued about development strategies.  It'd be especially
>intimidating to someone who's looking at ant to -learn- how to do project
>management.

I am not sure thats what ant docs should be teaching. There is plenty of
documentation that is far superior than anything ant-dev could produce
(except for maybe Diane). ant-dev focuses on reference material. It does
not try to reproduce source info (ie if you don't know how to use command
line version of RPM you are unlikely to know how to use task).


>
>The sum message is that the ant-clue don't think enough of the feedback to
>even respond politely.
>
>
>- Allen S. Rout
>- paying dues working on ant-wise cvs maintainance tasks, as suggested.
>
>
Cheers,

Pete

*-----------------------------------------------------*
| "Faced with the choice between changing one's mind, |
| and proving that there is no need to do so - almost |
| everyone gets busy on the proof."                   |
|              - John Kenneth Galbraith               |
*-----------------------------------------------------*