[Sodipodi-list] About sodipodi

[Lauris K. <la...@ka...>]

Hello everyone!

I am really gad there are still people who like
sodipodi :) So let's stop complaining for now,
and think positively for immediate future.

I admit, that I am lousy project manager. Ideas,
how to make things better (management, I mean)
are welcome. But let's be realistic - there have
been countless number of proposals in style:
'let's integrate/cooperate with XYZ'. Every one
of them has ended with friendly exchange of emails:
'let's cooperate', 'yes, let's cooperate'. And
that's all. However good proposal ends in nothing,
is it is not backed by immediate, interest and
achievable in small specific steps.
Things in code/features world are similar. We have
absolutely no lack of good ideas - they are flowing
in from doors and windows. Many of them are hard to
implement and thus will take time naturally. But even
with seemingly easy ones, keeping code coherency may
make things hard and slow. Too often difficult
compromise has to be find, that seldom is visible
to outside (sorry, I forgot what i wanted to say
with that).

Anyways, current unwritten guidelines are:
- be conservative with patches, try to suppress code
  enthropy by whatever means (this applies to code
  maintainers, not contributors, as we cannot expect
  contributors to be familar enough with the whole
  source tree).
- whenever possible be incremental, create new
  feature as compile-time alternative and let things
  settle before removing old code.
- avoid vapourware. There are many interesting things
  in sodipodi code, that can be made to work visibly in
  few weeks, but making them to work properly (as the
  integral parts of the whole) will take time
- keep it fun. It is not about code, it is about
  people, creativity, whatever. We may include things
  only because it is fun, or because submitter was nice
  person.

Hmmm... I see this is somewhat in conflict with 'Bazaar
style development' and 'release early, release often'.
Feel free to criticize.

Best wishes,
Lauris Kaplinski