From: Jonathan Gordon <jdgordy_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 9 Oct 2010 20:50:59 +1100

(replying to the whole thread not any one comment in particular)

is it absolutely impossible for this mailing list to have a civil discussion?

Anyway, Alex, maybe consensus was the wrong word, but I posed the
question a week ago and the replies there were about relatively
harmless bugs which affect a very small proportion of users. There are
far worse issues in the other 280 odd open bugs so the talk about this
being a useless release is just silly (well at least as silly as
suggesting any of the previous releases were stable also).

If I wasn't used to it already I would once again be hugely offended
by last nights IRC discussion. I dont think anyone can say that I (or
indeed any of the active devs) have ever told someone to go away when
they asked for code help (debugging or adding new code), I remember
distinctly walking AlexP and pixelma (and im sure others) through
debugging to help track down a bug, so you don't need to be good at C
to try to help (I don't mean you arnt, I'm just saying you arnt active
c coders... arg.. digging self deeper)...
So last night a rather rude discussion happened in my absence accusing
me of pretty much sabotaging the project, I would like to think that
that opinion is limited to exactly one person (who I will have the
same common curiosity as he did and not name names).

Fact is there are 280+ open bugs, 13 of which are under the "themes"
category. 3 are not really fixable (11039, 10686, 7006), 1 is charcell
only (11592), 3 are actually *new* bugs (one of which was already
closed as a non bug but reopened) from the massive rework which leaves
6 which could be considered regressions.

If you want a perfect release then everyone needs to chip in and close
bugs, if you are serious about wanting a bug free release then some
incentive is going to be needed. Realistically we will never get to 0
open bugs (I'm looking forward to eating my words) and untill then
having a hissy fit about minor bugs (where there is one person
maintaining the code) isnt very clever.

Lastly I'll remind the people that need reminding that everyone here
is doing it as a hobby, when it doesnt become fun anymore people
leave. The only people who could be considered having any authority to
activly force someone to work on something (or not work on something)
is the RSB and the most likely outcome of that is burnt bridges and
people leaving.


So all that said, it is my opinion that everyone chill for a bit, we
continue how we always have and release a mostly working release (with
the only criteria being "better" than the previous), revert r28000 in
the rel branch if that causes problems, and work to get the bug count
down for 3.8.

Jonathan
Received on 2010-10-09