From: Antony Stone <Antony.Stone_at_rockbox.open.source.it>
Date: Sat, 21 Jun 2008 17:10:32 +0100

On Saturday 21 June 2008 15:57, Paul Louden wrote:

> Antony Stone wrote:
> > a) close down the list if they don't intend to do anything with the ideas
> > expressed there
>
> The way you've phrased this, it sounds like somehow someone's obligated
> to follow up on feature requests.

No, I simply meant that if the requests are never going to be implemented, why
provide a mechanism for making them? It raises false hope.

> Even if we never, ever, ever intended to do anything about them, wouldn't
> they possibly still be valuable as a repository of ideas for new people
> interested in working on the project?

If that's what the instructions for the feature request at
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/FeatureRequests said then I'd be
quite happy, if this is how the postings are indeed regarded.

> > b) respond to the posting which are deemed "pointless or crappy and will
> > never be implemented" so that at least people know that, and they don't
> > hang around for years as open requests on the list.
>
> We do this already, the problem is there are many, many, many cases
> where, for example, I think it's a crappy, horrible, terrible idea but I
> know I shouldn't reject it outright simply because it's not my project
> and while I don't like it, maybe I can at least voice my concerns so
> that if someone does work on it, it finds its way in in a manner that's
> at least more suitable, and helps make more people (on average) happy.

At present the wording suggests that if you post a feature request which
several people want and is not impossible given hardware constraints then it
will get a response of either "we don't think this is a good idea so we won't
do it" or "we think this is a good idea but we don't have time to do it",
however if the reality is that it actually gets largely ignored and receives
no response whatever then I think the description of what the feature request
tracker is for should make that clearer.

Regards,


Antony.

-- 
"Black holes are where God divided by zero."
 - Steven Wright
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Received on 2008-06-21