Re: On the subject of Git, Bazaar, and the future of Emacs development

[Karl Fogel]

Eli Zaretskii <address@hidden> writes:
>> From: John Wiegley <address@hidden>
>> As a data point: if Emacs does decide on Git, I'll become a more
>> active contributor again; if it doesn't, I have other things to do.
>> Bzr/Mercurial is enough of a "joy-stealing" barrier that -- like now
>> -- I would not be interested in submitting my work upstream.  And
>> this same situation is true for some others as well, as evidenced by
>> voices on this mailing list.
>
>I'm very sad to hear that, because I think it is improper for
>contributors to put up such an ultimatum for a project.  I hope that
>people who contribute to Emacs (and any other project) are first and
>foremost interested in advancing the project, and any other
>considerations are secondary.

No ultimatum here; John made a statement about a development barrier.

If Emacs stored its master repository on punch cards and the only way to
contribute were to send in new cards by snail mail, some developers
would post saying "I'd like to be more involved, but the snail mail
thing is joy-stealing barrier for me."

Obviously that's a contrived example, but it is different from what John
said only in degree.

>At least that's how I reacted when Gawk and Make switched to Git: I
>gnashed my teeth and adapted.  I hope so will you.

All developers do cost-benefit analysis when deciding where to spend
their time.  The fact that your calculus differs from John's doesn't
mean you're doing anything qualitatively different from him.  Think of
all the free software projects you like & use but don't contribute to,
even when you've found a bug.  You're engaging in the same calculation:
the entry cost of fixing that bug is too high, so you choose to spend
your time elsewhere.  But sometimes, you might mail a project and say
"If your build process [or whatever] were easier, I'd be more likely to
contribute."  This would be no more an ultimatum than what John said.

-K