Re: should GOOPS be built-in?

[Greg Harvey <Greg dot Harvey at thezone dot net>]

Jim Blandy <jimb@red-bean.com> writes:

> Greg Harvey <Greg.Harvey@thezone.net> writes:
> > One is that doing stuff has often been an exercise in futility. People
> > do stuff. The stuff is totally ignored. People no longer feel like
> > doing stuff, and go off to hack at the linux kernel, where at least
> > there's the chance of getting in on the next big IPO.
> 
> Sure.  But this, and several of the other problems people have
> mentioned, are pretty obviously maintainership problems.  A good
> maintainer should get back to you with a yea or nay quickly.  It's not
> caused by the code, so there's no reason (that I can see) to believe
> that this problem still exists.

This was really in the context of why it seems that the people
involved in guile seem to like talking a whole bunch more than coding
(the implication: we're all a bunch of lazy, useless blowhards. The
reply was more to show why we aren't all a bunch of lazy, useless
blowhards ;); this is, at least historically, one of the reasons. It's
not to say that it'll continue to exist as a barrier, though it is
something that Maciej should be (and, of course, is) aware of.

Part of the problem is that, even if it does change (and I expect it
will), there will still be that perception of the whole process among
people who've experienced it.

Also (and another thing :), we have to realize that this is not always
the maintainers fault; expecting someone to quickly analyse a 300k
diff (umm... guilty; sorry about that) is not sensible. People doing
development work need to take some responsibility here (I pointed this
out in reply to Maciej).

Just pretending that all problems will go away isn't the answer;
realizing what we need to do, as a community, to make sure that the
problems don't continue is. 

> Actually, you need to give Maciej quite a bit of time, because he has
> a backlog of issues to make decisions on.  I've sent him a half-dozen
> messages about unresolved questions that should probably be dealt
> with.

I was going to say the same thing (i.e. now that we have a new
maintainer, wait a bit before sending off the humongous diffs ;).

-- 
Greg