tangoGPS community development, patches (was: tangoGPS magnify patch)

Yorick Moko yorickmoko at gmail.com
Tue Apr 13 09:03:08 CEST 2010


Seriously, you know I'm a fan of your software (wrote you a few e-mail IIRC)
but lately, in every thread I read, you are scaring away potential
contributors
and you never really answer the basic questions:

1) why don't you give people feedback on their patches?
2) why don't you use a mailinglist/SVN/bugtracker?
if you did this, you wouldn't have to worry about a fork:
3) what is bad about a fork?

I have no troubles whatsoever if you say: "It's my project and I don't want
to give anybody else even the slightest influence"
it's your right to do that
but ATM your words and actions are contradictory:

either say
a) that you want to do tangogps solo (or with a select few that you chose)
and tell people to fuck off with their stupid attempts at patches,
or say
b) that they are welcome to try and help out, and set up some infrastructure
or at least give them feedback
either way, there will be no need for anyone anymore to complain to you


Beaviour like this (previous e-mails) is making me consider to opkg remove
tangogps and install a fork as soon as it comes out
and no, this does not mean that forking is bad, this means that forking
gives people a choice
people will chose the best one
(like I did when we couldn't load gpx tracks in the official tangogps
version, but could in a patched version -
http://lists.openmoko.org/pipermail/devel/2009-April/005321.html -)
I forwarded you that message and got no response, for which I personally do
not blame you btw
It was only a forward and took me 2 seconds
But if I had written a patch, and got no response, I would seriously
consider not writing a patch again in the future


And yes, I'm not a programmer, but I have tried to do what I can; help
people on IRC in the early days, file bug reports, do some early testing for
a bunch of programmes, try to give feedback to the creators, add things to
the wiki, I even consider some of my posts on the ML us...)


In short:
please answer those three questions -1) 2) 3)- (or don't, that is an answer
on it's own)
and communicate a) or b)
(or c if you have a different opinion)
just make it sure that everyone knows what they can expect
because at this moment people have made efforts they wouldn't have done if
they had known were they stood (e.g. not getting any feedback to a patch)


I personally hope the project continues to evolve and improve, because I
find it a big addition to the available software on the openmoko.


Kind regards,
yorick



On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 12:09 AM, Marcus Bauer <marcus.bauer at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:19:25 -0400
> Stephen Pape <srpape at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Okay. I'm not sure what you're getting at, or why you're completely
> > changing the subject to make a personal attack on me over an argument
> > involving software development practices.
>
> So when you use Google it is okay and when I use Google it is a
> personal attack? Hey, you are such a cutie :-) You should try to sue
> Google for diffamation - you could get rich quick! :D And I will join
> you because "Linus Torvalds" and Openmoko has a lot more Google hits
> than me and that guy has never done any work on Openmoko at all.
>
> I'll right tomorrow write him an email about what's wrong with his
> completely fair scheduler. I think there are situations where it is not
> fair enough. And I'll be really upset if he disregards my email just
> because I have never contributed to the kernel (almost at least).
>
> > Maybe you should look inwards regarding your complains about developer
> > ego.
>
> I have scheduled 4 hours for this task next weekend. You think that's
> enough?
>
> > Good luck.
>
> Thank you. And thank you for your example that the best way for
> avoiding questions about forking is not to make any open source
> software at all.
>
> ...gosh, what a cutie Stephen is... :D
>
> HAVE FUN. Last mail, day over. Thanks guys.
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Openmoko community mailing list
> community at lists.openmoko.org
> http://lists.openmoko.org/mailman/listinfo/community
>
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