Re: Last gasp - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

On Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 8:43 PM, Greg Smith <greg@2ndquadrant.com> wrote:
> To use a personal example I don't think is unique, I would set aside more
> time to hack on the documentation if I didn't have to bug one of the
> existing committers each time I wanted to work on something there. It really
> feels like I'm wasting the time of someone who could be doing more difficult
> things every time I submit a doc patch.  I'd merrily write more of those and
> consume things like the never ending stream of corrections from Thom Browne
> if I could turn that into a larger part of my job.  I don't do more of that
> now because it's very unsatisfying work unless you can do the whole thing
> yourself.  Knowing everything is going to pass through another person
> regardless removes some of the incentive to polish something until it's
> perfect for submitters.

I wouldn't object to creating some doc-only committers.  OTOH, I would
object to anyone making non-trivial documentation enhancements without
posting their patches first and having a second person look it over,
so how much difference is there, really?

> As for broader concerns about whether people will alter their quality of
> work based on being able to commit, I'd suggest turning a look at yourself.
>  Your quality of work was high before it was a primary job goal, but it's
> surely gotten better now that it is, right?  Seems that way to me at least.

I think my quantity of work has gone up.  I'm not sure the quality is
much different, although perhaps I've gotten a bit sharper with
practice.

> I'm somewhat oddly pleased at how the overflow of incoming submissions for
> 9.2 has raised questions around not having enough active committers.  I hope
> decisions about adding more recognizes that distributing that power really
> does influence the ability of people to contribute, on average in a positive
> way.  All I see coming for next year is a dramatic increase in this class of
> problem.

My perception of what's going on here is dramatically different from
yours.  I don't think there was any overflow of submissions for 9.2.
For the most part I would describe it as a slow and boring release
cycle, with the usual spike in half-baked submissions right near the
end, except this release they were less baked than usual, which is why
most of them didn't go in.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company