Re: Re: Re: Run your own perlmonks!

demerphq, I respect you and I often agree with you. I think you're very wrong about my intentions and my character in this situation and I regret that.

I think the motivation of PM'ers who want to participate is to change PM, not the latest release of Everything, which by all indications PM will never use.

I believe we could use the latest release, which is much nicer, better documented, and easier to adapt.

if Linus or Larry insisted that every line of code in Linux and Perl was written by them in their style using the solutions they wanted to see implemented then neither would be the raring success it is.

That's exactly what Linus does. Larry is much less involved in the day-to-day decisions and he has amazing powers of compromise that nearly always lead to better decisions, but I've seen him shoot down ideas and implementations that he doesn't like.

A pressing example of this is your signature patch. It was poorly thought out. I have posted patches to it which correct its flaws and to make it consistent for root nodes and for replies. You haven't applied it. Why? Personally my guess is that you are insulted by this.

You are welcome to guess, but please believe me when I say that you are completely wrong. I wrote my patch for three reasons:

Some signatures bother me and I'd love to be able to ignore them.
I believe that code that sorta works is much better (even just as a discussion point) than a brilliant patch that isn't even written.
I thought it would take less than five minutes.

The reason I haven't applied your patch is that I'm on vacation this week — I've been travelling, with sporadic access. My system administrator experience taught me never to apply patches before or during vacation. I'm willing to take responsibility for that.

Then you obviously dont know how to delegate... This comment is pure elitist nonsense.

"Merit" was obviously the wrong word, and I think that explains your interpretation of my comments. I don't mean to say that only people who've been on Perl Monks for four years are capable of writing patches. I simply mean that, in my experience, for every ten people who ask for the source code to a project, one will download it. For every ten people who download it, one will read it.

The numbers of people who patch open source projects are shockingly small — in my case, out of hundreds of modules I've used, I've probably written patches for a dozen or so. There's nothing wrong with that, but it doesn't match my experience that there will suddenly be a flood of bugfixes and new features if all of Perl Monks were to be made ready for download.

Your point about not enough patch checking and application is well taken — I think that's the most productive discussion we could have.

I don't think that saying, "Hey, volunteers! DO THIS YOU HYPOCRITES!" is productive, though, and I definitely got that tone from the original post. Whether that's fair or accurate, theorbtwo will have to judge. I could be misinterpreting his intent very badly.

Comment on Re: Re: Re: Run your own perlmonks!

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Run your own perlmonks! by demerphq (Chancellor) on Sep 29, 2003 at 22:55 UTC
I think you're very wrong about my intentions and my character in this situation and I regret that. I think that this reply shows that you are correct that I have misjudged you. For that I too am regretful, and offer an unreserved retraction and apology of that part of my comment. Your rationale about vacations is very true, and one that I've heard from many a wise person. That's exactly what Linus does. Larry is much less involved in the day-to-day decisions and he has amazing powers of compromise that nearly always lead to better decisions, but I've seen him shoot down ideas and implementations that he doesn't like. I still believe that both Linus and Larry are very mature about these things. Ive seen Linus shoot things down, and fwict its with a rationale and a replacement. I know that he is very conservative in some respects, (I found his point of view on interfaces to be very illuminating,) but I do believe that he has strong delegation skills and does not insist on overseeing the very minutae of everything being done. "Merit" was obviously the wrong word, and I think that explains your interpretation of my comments. Yes I believe it does. I think I now understand what you were driving at. I think however that for open source to work properly the guiding lites need to be as encouraging as possible of new sparks. Its very important to encourage people to contribute, even if their contribution is below par. A person only capable of patching the perl documentation for typos and clarity one day will be the pumpking. (I make this as a general observation.) The newbie reading this with 1 XP in the bank right now will in two years be a core member of pmdev, etc... Your point about not enough patch checking and application is well taken — I think that's the most productive discussion we could have. I agree heartily. Another discussion is providing a dev/test enviornment for experimenting on. Since PM seems to be its own beast such an enviornment seems critical to any kind of serious collaborative efforts. As would of course an expanded group of people able to post patches. (Its a pity there is not some way to graduate such access rights.) I could be misinterpreting his intent very badly. Personally I think you have. I do think that to a certain extent his node was designed to have some shock value. And personally I agree. Its long been a minor frustration that pmdev isn't more coherent. I think that underlying theorbtwos comments is that frustration. More people with access to the code would mean more patches. More patches would mean more coordination and patch applying was required. Ultimately I think the question comes down to what type of site this is. There has always been an open kind of sharey vibe here. We share our knowledge and our skills and our time and sometimes even our personal lives here. Does this also mean that we share in the development of the site? I say it would be better if it does. As I said earlier I also realize that this is a question of balance and risk, and that the answers are not easy. I just hope that the gods want this to be the kind of place that I do and so make more or less the decisions I would. Cheers, --- demerphq _{First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. -- Gandhi}	[reply] [d/l]

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Re: Re: Re: Re: Run your own perlmonks!
by demerphq (Chancellor) on Sep 29, 2003 at 22:55 UTC

I think you're very wrong about my intentions and my character in this situation and I regret that.

I think that this reply shows that you are correct that I have misjudged you. For that I too am regretful, and offer an unreserved retraction and apology of that part of my comment. Your rationale about vacations is very true, and one that I've heard from many a wise person.

I still believe that both Linus and Larry are very mature about these things. Ive seen Linus shoot things down, and fwict its with a rationale and a replacement. I know that he is very conservative in some respects, (I found his point of view on interfaces to be very illuminating,) but I do believe that he has strong delegation skills and does not insist on overseeing the very minutae of everything being done.

"Merit" was obviously the wrong word, and I think that explains your interpretation of my comments.

Yes I believe it does. I think I now understand what you were driving at. I think however that for open source to work properly the guiding lites need to be as encouraging as possible of new sparks. Its very important to encourage people to contribute, even if their contribution is below par. A person only capable of patching the perl documentation for typos and clarity one day will be the pumpking. (I make this as a general observation.) The newbie reading this with 1 XP in the bank right now will in two years be a core member of pmdev, etc...

Your point about not enough patch checking and application is well taken — I think that's the most productive discussion we could have.

I agree heartily. Another discussion is providing a dev/test enviornment for experimenting on. Since PM seems to be its own beast such an enviornment seems critical to any kind of serious collaborative efforts. As would of course an expanded group of people able to post patches. (Its a pity there is not some way to graduate such access rights.)

I could be misinterpreting his intent very badly.

Personally I think you have. I do think that to a certain extent his node was designed to have some shock value. And personally I agree. Its long been a minor frustration that pmdev isn't more coherent. I think that underlying theorbtwos comments is that frustration. More people with access to the code would mean more patches. More patches would mean more coordination and patch applying was required.

Ultimately I think the question comes down to what type of site this is. There has always been an open kind of sharey vibe here. We share our knowledge and our skills and our time and sometimes even our personal lives here. Does this also mean that we share in the development of the site? I say it would be better if it does. As I said earlier I also realize that this is a question of balance and risk, and that the answers are not easy. I just hope that the gods want this to be the kind of place that I do and so make more or less the decisions I would.

Cheers,

_{First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

-- Gandhi}

[reply]
[d/l]