Date: Thu, 8 Jan 1998 22:57:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Gregory A Lundberg <lundberg@vr.net>
To: new-httpd@apache.org
Subject: Re: and while I'm pissing people off (fwd)
In-Reply-To: <199801090330.TAA10401@tiber.cisco.com>
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On Thu, 8 Jan 1998, Ian Kluft wrote:

> Be careful what you let "infuriate" you.  Apache is a volunteer project
> and the volunteers who do the work are allowed to make decisions that
> preserve their ability to sustain their efforts.  That decision was theirs
> to make and you may as well respect it.  If you work on any volunteer project
> long enough to settle down into the grind of getting work done, that concept
> should be abundantly clear.

It seems to me anyone who contributes is a "volunteer".  Controlling code
access makes sense but you're saying I and the rest of the lurkers who
only occassionally, if ever, post are not "volunteers" because we haven't
yet helped with the code in some vaugely defined 'substantial way'.  By
that standard voting members who've not posted patches for some time
should longer be considered "volunteers". 

An earlier posting made the comment that developers are more important
(forgive me, I forget the rest of the context right now). I beg to differ. 
You can develop all the really cool code you want but without users it's
meaningless.  Your best users are those who, like me, decide to see what
this "volunteer" project is all about.  Ignore the users at your own
peril.

> As far as I can see in the archive, when you submitted a patch in November
> it was acknowledged immediately although only part of it was used and
> the rest of the patch was replaced with rewrite work of their own.  Are you
> complaining that they didn't use your whole patch?  They definitely didn't
> ignore you.

Used?  Where.  I don't see it in any STATUS updates and, since it effected
security, I half-way expected it to appear in 1.2.5.  I'd seen voting on
patches from people who didn't have commit rights and sorta expected to
see something like that with mine.  Instead I get a "yeah, we should fix
that" on half my patch.  Should I come up with a way of leveraging root
through the PID file so it qualifies for 1.2.6?  Enough about my patch ..
it was my first attempt, and made more to get a feel for the openness of
the Group than for its own merits.  I leave the results to each of you to
decide.

( Maybe I'm only proving the other ppls threads about the frequency of
  betas/releases.  Has a change been committed or proposed which fixes
  the PID problem?  I just learned about from-cvs tonight, tomorrow I'll
  take a look. )

> When I submitted mod_mime_magic, I was surprised about how quickly it was
> accepted as part of 1.3.  I'm not a group member so I don't think there's a
> discrimination issue.  It sounds like it was an unfair suggestion.

So "cool" ideas make it and small, incremental fixes don't?  My comments
are not based on my single experience.  They're based on watching the
traffic on this list for months and the general feeling I've gotten from
that experience.

----

Gregory A Lundberg		Senior Partner, VRnet Company
1441 Elmdale Drive              email: lundberg@vr.net [205.133.13.8]
Kettering, OH 45409-1615 USA    voice: +1 (937) 299-7653