[Clipart] Understanding what "Open" means

[Mike Traum]

Bryce,
I fully understand what you are saying. But, I can't just start
coding something without knowing the general direction this project
is going and what would actually be useful to the project. 

I'd like to contribute, but it would only me a waste of my time
unless implementation of such work was done in a manner which is most
useful to the community and would be found to be acceptable to core
contributor team.

Thanks,
Mike 

--- Bryce Harrington <bryce at bryceharrington.com> wrote:
> I haven't been following the thread too closely, but the subject
> caught
> my eye, and I notice some tension over disagreements.  The
> discussions
> on the list need to be kept civil, so that the project remains
> friendly
> and accessible for new developers.
> 
> For folks new to the project, we do have some general ground rules,
> most
> of which we've adopted from Inkscape.  In addition to keeping the
> general discourse friendly, we also have a "pick up a shovel"
> philosophy
> that I think Jon mentioned the other day; basically this means that
> having ideas or critique is okay, but the project is organized
> around
> contributions, thus implementing the idea as a patch, or providing
> the
> code to fix something you see as a bug, is the best way of getting
> it
> accepted.
> 
> In general, the issues the project faces are less about having the
> "correct" or "best" ideas, but simply the time resources to
> implement
> them.  Thus, ideas that are presented in the form of a patch,
> script, or
> document will be the ideal (since there's less work to do to
> implement
> it.)
> 
> Anyway, I mention this because it's possible taht too much is
> getting
> hashed around on the list.  While of course it can be useful to
> argue
> out ideas on a list, in my experience this often can lead to
> disagreements, frustrations, and irritation between the
> participants.
> It is much more productive in my eyes to channel those energies
> into
> implementing those ideas.  An implementation doesn't guarantee
> it'll be
> accepted, but as they say, the devil's in the details so if you've
> got
> the details sorted out, we can spend less time in hell to start
> making
> use of it.  ;-)
> 
> Civility is very important to this long term success of this
> project,
> and one of the few rules we all have to demand of ourselves.  If
> you
> think a discussion is getting too heated, take it offline or set it
> aside until the next day.  And like I mentioned above, look and see
> if
> the matter really needs to be worked out in code, and if so, fire
> up a
> text editor and have at it.
> 
> Bryce
> 
> 


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Plan great trips with Yahoo! Travel: Now over 17,000 guides!
http://travel.yahoo.com/p-travelguide