[development] "I'm disappointed by the freeze"

[Dries Buytaert]

> The chaotic, open, nonstructural, non chronological way of working, makes
> it so, that even now, after a huge release slip, certain features can
> still make it in. While others that are maintained by single developers
> did not even make it when we were still "officially" open for features.

There has never been an official release date; only estimated
timelines.  So, "delay" might be better than "slip". That said, we all
agree that it is taking us longer than expected.

Yes, I screwed up estimating the release cycle.  I felt it was 'safe'
to provide a rough estimate of when Drupal 4.7.0 might be released.  I
screwed up because I underestimated the overall impact of the forms
API, because I underestimated the complexity of some bugs, and because
we had a slow start (it took a while before we managed to mobilize
contributors/developers to start fixing bugs).

However, in my view, the occasional (critical) feature that got
committed had no or very little impact on the delay.  I haven't
committed sweeping new features in weeks.  The main reason is the
forms API, the complexity of bugs, and the resource availability.

> I mentioned too, that features only seem to make it with either
> killes-patience (I was referring to the enourmous effort he made to get
> the revisions revised) or with a lot of luck ("luck", since I am no longer
> allowed to call it politics :)). We must recognise that not all of us have
> that patience, or even that time, but that we do produce code fixes and
> nice features.

The revision patch took a lot of time an energy to get committed.  Not
only from Gerhard (killes) but also from me; while Gerhard obviously
did most of the work, I spent hours reviewing and benchmarking that
patch.

If you don't have the time or persistence it takes to work on your
patch, that is OK.  If your patch is important enough, someone will
step forward to help work on your patch.  If that doesn't happen,
don't blame the system.  I won't commit patches that I don't fully
support.

As for 'luck' or 'politics'.  Yes, some patches are more easily
accepted than other patches.  The reason can be manifold; sometimes I
don't see why the patch is needed, sometimes it takes more time and
energy to convince me that the proposed changes scale, sometimes my
attention goes to a patch that I feel is more pressing, sometimes the
reviewers have conflicting views, etc.  Some decisions are easy, some
decisions are hard.  That's life.  Frustrations are included.

--
Dries Buytaert :: http://buytaert.net/