From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <326364c20705111743v7803ecd0yc199d3f34e28db5e@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sat, 12 May 2007 09:43:22 +0900 From: "Tom Lieber" To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] Is IBM ThinkPad R60e notebook compatible with Plan9? In-Reply-To: <16ef1735a4e044af3d1bc05bdc68eaa1@proxima.alt.za> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline References: <5d375e920705111224m6438418etef4d396a1e9bcf23@mail.gmail.com> <16ef1735a4e044af3d1bc05bdc68eaa1@proxima.alt.za> Topicbox-Message-UUID: 668472d6-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 I'm new here, so I may be off-base due to inexperience. I just don't see why there is any problem with, every once in a while, copying works-in-progress to sources with a README like: "This is NOT DONE. This is for those who are curious about the status of the project. I'm not looking for contributors." or, if you're feeling adventurous, "This is NOT DONE. This is for those who are curious about the status of the project. If you want to contribute, contact me and we can exchange patches. If there's community interest in adding to the code, we can see about setting up an RCS." The whole problem with uploading code seems to be an issue with trusting others. [Per Nerenberg's remarks.] Even if the code isn't 'ready,' with README files as above, people shouldn't harbor much resentment when incomplete code breaks their computer, and they shouldn't laugh at you for embarrassing coding errors. If you say "don't contact me!" and someone contacts you, it's because they didn't read the notes, or they aren't very good at following protocol. I haven't noticed many people that seem that way on the mailing list. Am I wrong? Can we not trust others here? Were your bad experiences with the Plan 9 community, or with the open source community at large? Uploading your source is as good a way to "hoist a flag" as any I can think of, and it has side-benefits for the curious or needy. I don't expect anyone should feel required to make their code available (which I feel is different from "releasing" the code), just that it would make life easier for some if this were the exception instead of the rule. Everyone always has the choice. [Per Lalonde's remarks.] The point isn't always to make collaboration possible. If someone wants to see the status of the code, or modify it locally to solve a problem, then if the code is somewhere they can access, this is possible. When it is hidden, nobody can benefit from it in the slightest. If you publish the code and solicit patches, and patches become hard to keep track of, that's a really good indicator that the project is too important to not have a public RCS somewhere, or that you should ask people to stop sending patches because it doesn't suit your development style. If you can't trust the community to even respect requests in your README, what can you rely on? I don't know about "saving Plan 9" because I have only a few dozen hours reading the papers and using it myself. All I know is that when I become familiar enough with the system to want to modify or improve it, the more nearly-complete code there is available, the better training wheels I'll have. The more broken, incomplete, and horribly-styled code I can look at, the more lessons I can learn. Sincerely, Tom Lieber http://AllTom.com/ http://GadgetLife.org/