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On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 11:33:12 +0200 Grobian <grobian@g.o> wrote: |
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| On 07-04-2006 11:07:28 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote: |
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| > I mean, as a purely hypothetical example... Could you imagine just |
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| > how many dumb feature requests, questions and requests for code |
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| > from the unwashed masses someone would get if they admitted to |
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| > having an early alpha of an alternative to Portage that didn't |
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| > require Python? Having to deal with the noise would be more than |
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| > enough to ensure that no more development would ever get done... |
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| |
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| This is ofcourse a purely hypothetical prediction for a hypothetical |
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| example. Another hypothesis might be that noone would care about the |
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| hypothetical alternative to Portage, hence no developer obstruction |
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| would take place at all. |
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That hypothesis looks unlikely, given all the discussions that took |
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place around portage-ng and the like, all the feature requests for |
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Portage on bugzilla and the countless zillions of "Portage should do |
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$x" threads on the forums. From a non-hypothetical perspective, I can |
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tell you that I received a significant number of really really stupid |
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suggestions when various developers found out about what's now called |
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eselect -- and that was with extremely limited internal publicity on a |
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far lower profile category of project than the one we're |
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hypothetically discussing. |
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| Yet another hypothesis might be that there |
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| would actually exist a few smart users that give some smart comments |
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| on the, in this case hypothetical, product. |
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This hypothesis probably holds. However, it ignores two other points: |
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Firstly, that the hypothetical noise would more than offset any |
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hypothetical advantage (little point in being given a diamond if it |
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comes in the middle of ten tonnes of horse manure and you only have |
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one shovel), and secondly that the hypothetical smart users could be |
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brought in on the hypothetical project anyway. |
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| Maybe user-rel should, together with GWN bridge this problem by |
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| keeping the source of news anonymous? Just to use it as teasers of |
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| what kind of things are being done in Gentoo's kitchen? |
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| Of course this only holds for new projects like in your hypothetical |
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| example. |
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Yikes, that's even worse than sticking them out with a name on it. |
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-- |
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Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Wearer of the shiny hat) |
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Mail : ciaranm at gentoo.org |
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Web : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm |
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