[erlang-questions] Erlang 10 years of Open Source; it is time for the next step

[Masklinn]

On 21 Mar 2008, at 15:03 , Matthias Lang wrote:
> Take a look at a patch that someone actually submitted, for example:
>
>  http://www.erlang.org/pipermail/erlang-questions/2008-January/032345.html
>
> it's a pretty typical user-contributed patch, i.e. it's a small
> change, only about five lines of code, it fixes a definite problem,
> and, most importantly, it's mostly crap. The guy who submitted the
> patch
>
>     1. couldn't be bothered testing it properly
>
> and  2. messed with some internals which he most likely doesn't
>        understand.
>
> and  3. made some arbitrary and undocumented design decisions, e.g.
>        about how wide the hash should be
>
> and  4. couldn't be bothered coming up with a solution which works
>        with HIPE and with old versions
>
Then unless starting from that patch is vital (e.g. it's a good start  
on fixing something really broken) are entitled to send feedback on  
it, and plain refuse it if the submitter doesn't want to fix the  
patch. And more importantly (as they're already entitled to do so) the  
tools should help them doing it.

> i.e. he did the first 5% of the job and then wasn't prepared to put in
> the hard work to actually finish. Feedback from the OTP group (your
> suggestion) isn't going to fix that.
>
Maybe it wouldn't, maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't in that case but  
would in others.

> (the patch is mine, i.e. I am too lazy to do the job properly. Sorry.)

I can't judge that you're too lazy to do the job properly as I'm too  
lazy to do it at all.

PS: I fully know that tools and processes can't fix everything, or  
more precisely can't fix anything, but they can help change things.