Mark Guzdial guzdial@cc.gatech.edu is claimed by the authorities to have written:
Bug fixes are easy -- just harvest them and patch them in.
Even tiny bug fixes need to be carefully considered. Oft times somebody will find something that seems not to work for them and 'fix' it; almost as often it turns out to completely screw up some other pat of the system. You need to know a _lot_ to do the job properly.
Enhancements, especially big ones, need to be made carefully. I hope that as decisions get made to put new things in, the decisions are made while considering whether we can afford to KEEP the new things in, i.e., is the developer promising to stick around and keep it going. I don't mean to slight the developers of Linda, Connectors, etc. I just think that maintaining the enhancement belongs on the decision criteria list.
Exactly. This is one of the reasons why I always push for a) reviews b) "If it isn't documented, it doesn't exist. If it doesn't exist, how can we incorporate it?"
tim