Nicolas George wrote:
> Thorsten Froehlich  wrote in message <48843f8c@news.povray.org>:
>> 							      I saw you have a 
>> few open bugs. Here are small fixes for those bugs.
> 
> Stop here. The source code was not available. The conversation is therefore:
> "I saw you have a few open bugs. I can not fix them without the source code.
> I will go and see if I can help someone else."
<snip>
> And sadly, the lack of access to the source code made him go away two years
> ago.

I provided one example of a bug existing since 3.5. I can add several more 
to that list, all publicly known and for none it is difficult to check that 
they still exist in 3.7. For none was a fix ever contributed in *seven* years!

	Thorsten

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rafal wrote:
> Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> 
>> Yes, I agree that every team member needs to greet all contributors with
>> flowers personally.
>> Thorsten
> 
> What if given developer has an allergy to particular flower?

Hmm, the developer will be greeted with chocolate ;-)

	Thorsten

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Thorsten Froehlich  wrote in message <4884b36d@news.povray.org>:
> I provided one example of a bug existing since 3.5. I can add several more 
> to that list, all publicly known and for none it is difficult to check that 
> they still exist in 3.7. For none was a fix ever contributed in *seven* years!

That only proves my point: the lack of welcome to contributions made
everyone go away.

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Nicolas George wrote:
> Thorsten Froehlich  wrote in message <4884b36d@news.povray.org>:
>> I provided one example of a bug existing since 3.5. I can add several more 
>> to that list, all publicly known and for none it is difficult to check that 
>> they still exist in 3.7. For none was a fix ever contributed in *seven* years!
> 
> That only proves my point: the lack of welcome to contributions made
> everyone go away.

ROFL

	Thorsten

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> [...]
> ~ - The 3.5 code was quite different from the 3.1 code (on which
> MegaPov and all community development were based and which was
> pretty old at the time). When 3.5 came out, it required a
> significant investment to port the patches to the new code base and
> most contributors didn't want to spend that time re-doing something
> they had already done just to have to do it again when the next
> version came out (which is one reason why I never ported my
> contributions to the new code base and simply moved to other projects).


Actually the reasons for the MegaPOV development having stopped more or 
less is due to a multitude of reasons - the nature of official POV-Ray 
development after 3.1 is only one of them.  It made continuous 
development of patches more difficult but actually 3.5 and 3.6 both 
greatly simplified managing the project (since both times various 
important changes were integrated or made obsolete by the official 
changes).  Adapting your patches to the changes in the base system for 
example would have been no serious problem but it was not done (i 
considered it several times but always got other priorities in the way).

Here a list of reasons that are from my perspective the most significant 

factors

- change of priorities of several active contributors: Nathan, 
Wlodzimierz and myself.
- lack of interest and participation of both developers and 
non-developers.  We did not receive much feedback on the patches, 
epspecially in the form of active users reporting their experiences and 
contributing sample scenes, tutorials etc.  Note this is not meant to 
sound disappointed - there are multiple reasons for this like the change 

of the software landscape in 3d-CG, the change of mentality in the net 
in general and the focus of the patches that were actively developed.  I 

don't know if licensing actually plays a significant role here but i 
doubt it.
- limitations of the currect internal design of POV-Ray for implementing 

interesting features (this is mostly still the case for 3.7 BTW).
- significant changes in some of the primary computer platforms MegaPOV 
is used on.  This was of course the Apple switch to Intel hardware but 
also the developments on the Windows platform that turned away many 
developers (in the end we had no possibility to build a Windows 
executable with good performance among the core developers any more).

Note much of the actual patch development has been done by individuals 
without much discussion with others - neither private nor public.  This 
has been the case both in the old MegaPOV 0.x as well as afterwards.

-- Christoph

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"alphaQuad" <alp### [at] earthlinknet> wrote:
> a warning that nobody heard?
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Shadow walks faster than you
> You don't really know what to do
> Do you think that you're not alone
> You really think that you're immune to
> Its gonna get the best of you
> Its gonna lift you up and let you down
> Hm hm hm
> It will defeat you then teach you to get back up
> After it takes away all that you learn to love
>
> Your reflection is a blur
> Out of focus but in confusion
> The frames are suddenly burnt
> And in the end of a roll of illusions
> A ghost waiting his turn
> Now I can see right through
> Its a warning that nobody heard
>
> It will teach you to love what you're afraid of
> After it takes away all that you learn to love
> But you don't
> Always
> Have to hold your head
> Higher than your heart
>


I prefer the quote

"What I hear, I forget."
"What I see, I remember."
"What I do, I understand."
-Confucius

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Thorsten Froehlich wrote:

 
> On the other hand, in how may open source projects has the following
> attitude ever worked: I am a developer new to your project. I saw you have
> a few open bugs. Here are small fixes for those bugs. Further, I have some
> suggestions for more substantial improvements, would you like to hear
> them?

Probably in most


> In how many open source projects will the following
> attitude ever work: I am new to the project, so first I tell the existing
> developers all they do wrong. Then I claim that I am the over-expert in
> some field, i.e. parallel programming, and hence when I come I expect all
> developers to drop everything they are doing to support my major changes
> to their program.

Probably in most, if the big changes where actually good, and are possible
to be applied gradually (I guess 3.6 -> 3.7 was a huge jump to add SMP at
all, but now as it works overall, some finetuning could be usefull
probably?)

> Just because we don't want contributors like those who contributed to the
> Debian OpenSSL "fix" does not mean we don't want contributors. But fact is

<debiancat> Im in your code, commenting out your functions

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Thorsten Froehlich wrote:

>> That only proves my point: the lack of welcome to contributions made
>> everyone go away.
> 
> ROFL
> 
> Thorsten

- open code!
- no
- you suck
- no, u!
- no, u!
[...]

- but we already said we will (re-)open the source (of 3.7)
- ok so lets do it
- lets

Can we move already to the end? =)

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Rafal wrote:
> Thorsten Froehlich wrote:
> 
>>> That only proves my point: the lack of welcome to contributions made
>>> everyone go away.
>> ROFL
>>
>> Thorsten
> 
> - open code!
> - no

Something that never was closed cannot be opened.

	Thorsten

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Rafal wrote:
>> In how many open source projects will the following
>> attitude ever work: I am new to the project, so first I tell the existing
>> developers all they do wrong. Then I claim that I am the over-expert in
>> some field, i.e. parallel programming, and hence when I come I expect all
>> developers to drop everything they are doing to support my major changes
>> to their program.
> 
> Probably in most, if the big changes where actually good, and are possible
> to be applied gradually (I guess 3.6 -> 3.7 was a huge jump to add SMP at
> all, but now as it works overall, some finetuning could be usefull
> probably?)

Then try i.e. on the gcc mailing list. But I take no responsibility for your 
head! I suggest the ability to run fast... ;-)

	Thorsten

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