In article <4012a759@news.povray.org> , Wolfgang Wieser <wwi### [at] gmxde>  
wrote:

> I was told the same argument some time ago. It read like "we did a
> complete rewrite of unix.cpp but you can do everything with the old
> version so feel free to send us patches for the old code".
>
> I could consider that as an expression of no interest in what other
> people are doing. It's a bit like preaching water and drinking wine.

Why?  The policy to not make development source code accessible has a good
reason, because it simply did not work in the past.  Considering that back
in that "past" far fewer users with a lot more technical clue has access to
online resources, the internet of today does only make matters worse.

> Don't you think that this effectively hinders futher development?
> It makes me waste time writing patches for old code which have to
> be converted to the new code. It makes the POVRay team waste time
> getting patches based on one-year old code base. And finally, most
> of the bugs I see come from looking at the source, not from using
> a binary.

But you have access to the source code.  Use it.  Honestly I have to say
several of the contributed bug fixes we so far got for 3.5 cannot (well,
should not) be used as is in the source code.  While many bug fixes
correctly identify the problem, they frequently tend to be more of a "hack"
than a solution.

And periodically looking at various "open source" development projects makes
me worry a lot about even considering using that software.  Despite its age,
the POV-Ray source code is in a very good shape compared to many much
younger "open source" projects whose individual modules are rewritten every
three or four years...

> But I see a further possibility using the following roadmap:
> (1) get povray 3.6 out
> (2) bring out long awaited new megapov based on 3.6
> (3) more frequent megapov updates

The reason for there being no MegaPOV updates is that early on in the 3.5.1
development the MegaPOV sources were tried to that version and its release.
Due to purely administrative (and not going to be discussed in public), not
developmental reasons, the release of 3.5.1 had to be delayed far beyond our
expectations.  That is why there is POV-Ray 3.6 now, because we did not
simply stop development while having to deal with administrative issues.

> In this case I'd be more happy to see current megapov development
> and to be able to write patches for (or even contribute to) megapov
> [than to mainline povray] anyways.

My personal opinion is that no future patches' source code from MegaPOV
should be added to an official POV-Ray at all.  This is from the very bad
experience with patch quality that caused massive problems getting a timely
release of POV-Ray 3.5, and even in 3.6 not all of the flaws in some patches
have been corrected.

Apart from that, with 4.0 being a rewrite, producing patches, especially
some that just add minor individual tweaks (usually by parser or
preprocessing data later rendered) rather than new objects, are of very
little use because those parts of POV-Ray are in a major need for a rewrite
while most of the objects can just be converted.

> To me (as looking at it from outside) it seems like there would be
> enough ideas, code and manpower around here for quite some innovation
> but there is somebody somewhere out there actively pulling the break.

Well, POV-Ray is a program for users, not for developers.  Just adding
features is the absolute wrong way of doing development.  If you want to
contribute, there is a long list of outstanding bugs on www.povray.org and
p.bugreports that definitely have a higher priority than adding new
features.  And you can be sure the community as well as the POV-Team will
greatly appreciate bug fix contributions.

Still, also said list has been available since the release of POV-Ray 3.5, I
am only aware of two people only ever to look into any of them.

> I learned that in most cases it turns out negatively to hinder those
> people who want to work (and have the ability to do it well) from
> doing their work.

I strongly disagree.  All "those people who want to work" usually do only
want to add features.  They have no desire to go through the very time
consuming, boring and frequently frustrating process of fixing bugs.  So,
when pushing for a quick including of a patch into the official POV-Ray,
these people also want to leave at least some of the work of fixing the bugs
to the POV-Team.

Honestly, I find such behavior very disrespectful towards both the community
as well as the POV-Team members.  On the one hand the community is shown
some great new feature, but when there are bugs, frequently in the past more
than one original developer did not have any time to finish their work.  I
have no problem with someone turning to other interests, but I have a
problem if they do so only after they made the community curious about their
work.

In the end, the POV-Team frequently did add such features, and by doing that
had to go through all the source code they didn't write, fix the bugs, fix
the design flaws, and in many cases even write the documentation.

THIS IS NO FUN At ALL!  It takes a real lot of time and patience!!!  Time
and patience the original developer could not be bothered to find in several
cases.  So, if you consider the POV-Team being careful about adding new
features "to hinder those people who want to work", fine, I call it
prevention of wasting even more of our free time on something simply nobody
else wanted to waste their free time doing.

In conclusion, contribute fixes for the real bugs that concern users, or
quit complaining.

Of, course, this is only my personal opinion, nothing else.

    Thorsten

____________________________________________________
Thorsten Froehlich, Duisburg, Germany
e-mail: tho### [at] trfde

Visit POV-Ray on the web: http://mac.povray.org

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