Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2017 15:13:51 -0800 From: Dieter BSD <dieterbsd@gmail.com> To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Cc: freebsd-arch@freebsd.org Subject: Getting PRs fixed [ was: Re: The future of fortune(6) ] Message-ID: <CAA3ZYrCCQPeSk4EvL=VN06R8C_FHkXmj%2BSor46t2sWPjzJTbJg@mail.gmail.com>
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( Does this need to be cc-ed to arch, or is hackers sufficient? ) Dieter> Ignoring PRs for years and years and years and years... Mark> Please suggest a constructive solution. (This is a serious request.) Given the discussion this has come out of, (demands for censorship due to someone claiming to be offended at something) I suppose I should state that this is not intended to be offensive. Offense, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I have intentionally left out a few details/specifics in an attempt to avoid or at least reduce offense. Damn it Jim, I'm an engineer, not a motivational speaker! D> Status reports that do not report progress (or lack thereof) D> reducing the number of open PRs. There used to be periodic reports sent to various mailing lists listing open PRs. At some point these stopped coming. Perhaps due to: D> Replacing a working PR system with bugzilla Perhaps these reports could be resurrected? Or made part of the quarterly status reports? Or something? Many PRs were ignored even with the reports, but it shouldn't hurt and might help a little. Recruiting additional developers might help. How to do that? Well, I don't know, but I have noticed that a half-baked attempt at cloning Unix has become very popular despite being very buggy and brain damaged. I tried it a few times with horrible results. I have completely given up on it after it scrambled my data. :-( Anyway it seems to have a lot of developers and corporate support, so they must be doing *something* right. Perhaps someone could study that project and figure out how they are attracting all these developers and corporate support. Perhaps the person we should be recruiting is a recruiter? (Catch 22?) I have observed the foundation receiving significant donations, (like US$1M) and spending money on things that seem unlikely to result in improvements to the system. Perhaps some of this bounty could instead be used to pay developers to fix bugs. I observe a lot of new features being developed, and yet PRs continue to be ignored. I realize that many people consider developing new features to be more fun that fixing old PRs, but the old PRs do need to be fixed. Some of these PRs cause data to be lost, or other hardships. :-( It is especially annoying when a developer cannot be bothered to maintain even their own code, much less anyone else's. Are FreeBSD's developers mature adults or just children? Perhaps there should be a requirement to fix x old PRs to receive a commit bit, and to fix y bugs/year to retain it. I don't especially like this idea, but offer it mainly in hopes that it might inspire someone to think of a way to improve it. I shouldn't have to say this, but when I say fixing a PR I mean just that. Fixing it, not just closing it with some absurd excuse.
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