27 Nov
2005
27 Nov
'05
7:01 p.m.
Casper Hornstrup wrote:
A project rule doesn't give you the right to ridicule people. It merely
says "this it the way we do it" until such time that the rule is changed.
It's a fact of life that within a group of people there will be disputes,
so we need a way to resolve these disputes and currently we have voting
to do that. If you know of a more effective method than voting then feel
free to share it.
By making project rules we can better avoid the "I'll rewrite it this way
because my way is better" class of changes. Without project rules, it is
the last one to commit that "wins".
I don't disagree with this, but as I stated before this is an open
source unpaid project, so we should only have so many rules as are
strictly necessary. We should take great care about the rules we create.
Too many rules - especially frivolous ones, and we'll drive potential
developers and even existing developers away.
Apparently you do as you just stated that there should
be copyright
information in the header.
I stated that copyright information is important. What I did not state
was the exact formatting. I'll give the benefit of the doubt that you're
not intending the exact indentation and order of parameters to be
specified by the vote, but that's not made clear.
Furthermore, this vote seems to have started in part because you
complained that a header copied from another file didn't get updated
properly. I can only assume that means you intend to have removed parts
of the headers that are in excess of the agreed-upon header in the vote.
That's what comments are for.
As I just stated, you were complaining about comments in the header
about the name of the file that you felt shouldn't be there. Where do we
draw this line of what's an allowed comment?
That you or someone else don't like a change
shouldn't prevent someone
else from trying to make that change. Which person or persons should
decide which changes shouldn't be allowed to be proposed? If you don't
like what someone else proposes, then you can use your right to vote to
stop that change within the project.
Even this is a gray area, because if someone is making changes to an
area nobody else wants to touch... well... maybe I don't like it, but if
I'm not willing to fix a perceived problem but someone else is, then how
much right do I have to complain.... it's like the story of the little
red hen: nobody wanted to help her bake the bread, but they all wanted
to eat it. All I'm saying is that we should try to limit our complaints
about other people's changes just because we don't "like" them.
We're
never going to all agree completely on how things should be done. We
need to agree to disagree and only invoke this kind of policy-setting
when it's really important. I think at a minimum we need to more
carefully word the proposals for the top-level source header issue here
- in order to solve the problem without unnecessarily constraining
freedom to develop in each of our own styles.
Sorry, I can't do that. Feel free to vote Further
Discussion though
and/or put up a new vote with a proposal to "let the developer
choose/change/remove the contents of the headers at his will".
I went ahead and selected further discussion, as it seems the most
prudent way to pursue my feelings on the issue. If not enough people
feel as I do, there's no point wasting effort creating another vote.
Thanks!