Before I even say anything: I think the core team does a great job, they're as fair as humanly possible in their decisions, and Django's stability is amazing.
My disclaimer out of the way, I'd like to share my own experience of being a new contributor just to add another perspective. I only started submitting patches during the 1.2 release cycle, so I'm still a relative newbie. In 4 months I've learned *a lot* about Django's process and the history of thought behind many of the issues in both the codebase and the development process. But that knowledge wasn't easy to come by. I read the contributing docs twice before I even opened my first ticket. Twice more before I submitted a single patch. When I finally did submit my first patch, I was terrified of getting it wrong and having it rejected. I'd seen it happen on other tickets. It wasn't until I got *more involved* and started keeping up with the trac timeline--watching the ebb and flow of tickets--that I started to understand how the tone on trac had a reason. Until you get that perspective, it's hard to know what's right or wrong, and easy to take things personally. The core devs can seem imposing or scary simply because you don't know them. Even after reading the contributing docs and all the internals several times, there was still a large portion of knowledge that I found only existed outside those docs. Spending hours reading through this list's history and through the #django-dev IRC logs have answered a lot more of my questions. While it might seem obvious to say "go add that information to the docs" the truth is that a lot of what new contributors need to learn is subjective, and may not belong in official documentation. I did find that the ambiguity of ticket statuses in trac made it hard to dive right in and understand what was going on. But that's been discussed at length. When someone has an idea for a solution there, I'll be the first to jump in and work on it. If anything, my point is that getting started as a Django contributor *can* be difficult, and the core team just being aware of that fact is a good thing. That said, I have no sympathy for the malcontents. I would really rather have seen 1.2 get released than 80+ messages on these two threads. If complaints were patches, we'd be halfway to 1.3 by now. Divisiveness and ill-willed argument is stifling to creativity and progress. I hope this post doesn't contribute to it. I'll close with Benjamin Franklin: "We must hang together or assuredly we shall hang separately." - Gabriel On Apr 19, 7:19 am, Jacob Kaplan-Moss <ja...@jacobian.org> wrote: > Hi folks -- > > I'd like to try to reboot the discussion that's been going on about > Django's development process. > > I'm finding the current thread incredibly demoralizing: there's a > bunch of frustration being expressed, and I hear that, but I'm having > trouble finding any concrete suggestions. Instead, the thread has > devolved into just going around in circles on the same small handful > of issues. > > So: here's your chance. You have suggestions about Django's > development process? Make them. I'm listening. > > Jacob > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Django developers" group. > To post to this group, send email to django-develop...@googlegroups.com. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit this group > athttp://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. To post to this group, send email to django-develop...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en.
