Re: [Slashcode-general] Slashcode is dead, long live Slashcode?

[Shane Z. <sh...@lo...>]

On Jun 11, 2009, at 8:49 AM, Alexandre Leroux wrote:

>
> [...]
>
> Slashcode is dead, long live Slashcode?
>

<snipped>

I too agree, and disagree.

The community seems to be slowly drifting away. Things like not  
accepting patches, vagaries about where things are heading, no  
official releases, no automated migratory path from 2.2.6 to the  
latest, moving from CVS at SF to git at github and then seemingly  
stopping commits to it, all are rough on an open source project. (to  
be fair, it's been many months since I did a git pull to look, but  
there seemed to be quite a draught from the faucet for quite some time).

That said, it's open source. We all have the source. Want a feature?  
Code it up. Can't code? Learn or pay someone to do it.

Just because a company open sources it's wares, doesn't mandate that  
it prop the community, drive it nor fund it. They've done the vast  
majority of the work just by agreeing to put it out there for all to  
use, for free, ridicule, bitch about. And most of the time when this  
happens, employees end up devoting a chunk of their personal time to  
help out the project or stick around on IRC or help handhold those w/  
lesser skills. Sometimes a ridiculous amount of personal time, emails,  
IM's and IRC chats, considering it's their *own* time.

Also, someone pointed out one of the best things about Slashcode  
(IMHO) - the stability of it. Over the past few years there have been  
an absolute minimal number of security holes. For the most part, it's  
stable like a rock. You can get it running, and then you don't spend  
your time having to maintain it daily, you and your staff just use it.

So I guess I've seen it both ways.

I suppose someone could step up and fork it, put up a project and  
system for it, patch it, mod it, take requests, take submissions  
(review, tweak, test, patch), take all the existing feature requests  
on SF and implement them. Would that drive the community back to what  
it once was years ago?

Who's got a hand waving in the air volunteering to do all that for  
free??

I don't know of any other way to "help" the community, other then to  
devote time to it. Which at the moment, and for the foreseeable  
future, I do not have.

  Shane