umm.... HERE! HERE! On Thu, Nov 6, 2008 at 1:59 AM, Chris Johnson <cxjohnson@gmail.com> wrote:
This has always been the assumption -- that there is more development in the newest version than in older versions. But it has always just been an assumption without proof -- and even I feel it was probably true most of the time, or in the past.
I bet there could be some of those keen on statistics could easily write a few queries to determine which is the case. It would be important to also consider contrib too.
If one only measures core development, than of course it's true, simply because past core releases are essentially frozen except security fixes.
But right now, I would bet far more effort is being spent on Drupal 6 development than on Drupal 7 development. And it's part of this topic's problem.
Issues and patches are piling up in the Drupal 6 issue queues, but the push is to look at Drupal 7 development.
For example, I'm spending 100% of my effort to build Drupal 6 websites. I find a bunch of bugs in D6. I write issues and post patches. My motivation to check for the same problem in D7 and then develop a D7 patch, is going to be considerably less than my motivation for D6. I might not even be able to do that, if the D7 code is not sufficiently ready or stable. If I'm already waiting for patches to be applied to D6 modules, I'm not going to be interested in waiting even longer to have them applied to D7 and then get backported to D6. I need the fix yesterday, not next year.
I understand the rationale for expecting all patches to be addressed in head and then back ported. However, sometimes I wonder whether it would be also effective to have the patches ported forward. This *is* one point of having a version stated as maintained. It could be argued it is less efficient, but if it helps people work more I would argue it is a more effective approach in some areas.
Really it's all about every member of the community having a different agenda, and everyone is negotiating with the community to get as much support for their own agenda as possible. Some people have more influence than others or more power than others in these negotiations (the Drupal community is much like the rest of life in this regard, after all).
The question is whether the majority should continue to be facilitate the agenda of the minority, or if the majority should stand up, notice that it is the majority, and push more strongly for what they want.
I think this is a strong point, and it also reflects the changing nature of the Drupal community.