From: Antony Stone <Antony.Stone_at_rockbox.open.source.it>
Date: Sun, 22 Jun 2008 12:58:16 +0100

On Sunday 22 June 2008 12:22, Daniel Stenberg wrote:

> If you look at the feature requests posted to the tracker the last couple
> of eyars, I think you'll notice that most of them are totally pointless.

In that case they should be marked as such and not simply remain open?

> They often fall in one of these three categories:
>
> A) pointless request since there's an improvement most of the devs already
> could think of themselves

I don't understand why, just because a developer could think of the idea on
his/her own, this makes it a pointless request? I guess I'm still working
from the premise that the more people want a feature, the more effort the
developers might like to put into implementing it, though. If producing what
the largest number of users appear to want is not the aim of the project then
I'm clearly not going to have the same ideas about the merits of feature
requests that you do.

> B) far-out idea that no dev is interested in. New game-system ports etc.
> Also these are of course easily thought of by everyone. Pointless. Or it
> could also be major new stuff that some dev would want to do but is a huge
> undertaking. Still pointless to ask for.

If this is a consensus of opinion and not just the feeling of a single
developer, why can't the request be marked as "too complex" or "too far
removed from Rockbox aims" so that people know that's what is thought of it?

> C) minor tweaks/different approaches to existing features. These are often
> modified menu item positions, key mapping, naming. Mostly pointless,
> and when not they are subject for debates and discussions that are better
> held on a mailing list or forum or IRC anyway as the bug tacker is a lousy
> place for discussions.

I agree with that last part, but this is not a reason to stop people making
the requests - it's a reason to enable people to discuss the requests and see
what the majority would like, and then to record that in the tracker as "the
way most people appear to want it implemented (if at all)".

> Can anyone even mention five good ideas (previously not discussed or
> thought of) posted in the feature-request tracker posted during the last 3
> years? Three? one?

I haven't been part of the system for long enough to even comment on that.


Antony.

-- 
Normal people think "If it ain't broke, don't fix it".
Engineers think "If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet".
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Received on 2008-06-22