Need to do something

Andreas Raab andreas.raab at gmx.de
Thu Oct 13 07:31:42 UTC 2005


Chris Muller wrote:
> One more point is I don't believe code "ownership" will ultimately satisfy
> because it requires unreasonable expectations from someone (the owner) and
> creates a bottleneck.  How can you rely on that?  

You can by not having a single owner. Have a group (team). There is 
nothing wrong with that - groups can own code as much as individuals and 
the process by which you get approved in the group will determine what 
the group thinks about the changes you do. To give an example, if you 
wanted to collaborate on the chess game (to take the same boring example 
;-) I'd probably let you in without even asking because I would expect 
that you show some interest in how this code works and that you are 
probably experienced enough (or willing to learn) how to do these things 
right.

> Say something needs to be done to an "owned" package but the owner is on
> vacation.  Someone else is willing to do it or has done it already.  Oops, but
> its not the right person.  Energy wasted.  The community must capture the
> energy given to it, not try to draw it from specific places (people).

Well ... no. This is just saying, allow everyone, no matter how 
inqualified, no matter how inexperienced to change any code they like 
because you must "capture the energy". Sorry, but I don't believe that 
works, I know not a single project where this works. It doesn't work in 
Squeak either - all the evidence that exists says that it is worthwhile 
to have a qualified person deal with an issue if you possibly can. Yes, 
there are some situations where you need to make a decision despite the 
absence of qualification but those are few and far inbetween. This 
should not be the default.

And the energy doesn't get wasted if there is a process that captures 
it. Like, if you have a fix for something but are not the expert, post 
it to the bug tracker. Let the experts look at it. No energy is wasted 
unless somebody fixed that already (can't be helped) or your fix is 
flawed (can't be helped either but it's better to find the flaw than to 
have the flawed code go in).

> Sorry, I'm done now, thanks for reading.

Your're welcome. Thanks for contributing ;-)

Cheers,
   - Andreas



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