[development] Wasting time and effort

[andrew morton]

On Mon, Mar 9, 2009 at 9:52 PM, Matt Chapman <Matt at ninjitsuweb.com> wrote:
> As has already been pointed out, we already require an application for CVS
> access. The picture is being painted like anyone off the street can just
> start committing to the repo, and that's just not the case.

I think that's really the problem in a lot of cases. New devs get
screened but existing ones don't bother. I know in my case I've often
done a cursory search but since I know what code I'd need to write, I
just jump right in.

> Even this level of moderation has it's drawbacks, and here's my true story
> to prove it:
>
> My very first Drupal module was a simple integration with a third party
> service. I applied for my CVS account, and in the meantime, someone else who
> already had a CVS account coded and published a practically identical
> module. Wasted time and effort on their part, because they didn't know about
> my module because I didn't have permission to publish it yet.

I think this bit of unused work is really not that large a price to
pay for having multiple duplicate modules sprung out on the community
with no clear differentiation. It's hard to unbreak the egg. Once
there's people using the module you can't really take it back.

andrew