Hi all,
Having gone through the process for the first time of recommending an
amendment to CF I'd like to share some experiences and opinions. If
you don't want to read all of this mail, then I can summarize this by
saying that I think the requirements for proposers of changes are too
onerous and a strong disincentive to potential contributors. Here's
why:
1) The instructions for posting Trac tickets are not very clear and
it's not at all clear that it is necessary to use the template. The
button on the ticket creation page that generates the template is easy
to miss, particularly if one is used to other Trac sites that don't
have this button.
2) The difference between the Conventions document and the Conformance
document is not clear to me and is not explained on the website.
3) The respective roles of the Trac site and mailing list are not
clearly delimited.
4) The procedure for identifying a moderator is not clear. Will a
proposal just "die" if a moderator doesn't volunteer?
5) If I want to propose a change to CF I apparently have to propose
the *actual text* that will go in the Conventions and Conformance
documents. This means that I (the proposer) have to read and
understand the entirety of these documents and keep up with both of
them as they change. I would have thought that proposing actual text
would be the job of one of the document authors, who already knows the
documents inside out. This is much more akin to what happens in the
open-source software world, where a mailing list is used to agree that
a proposal is needed, then a change request is filed. It is then up
to the developers to implement the change "properly". Of course, if
the proposer can submit a patch this is a bonus, but proposers will
only do this when they are familiar enough with the software to be
confident that their patch won't break other things.
All of these things mean that it would take hours of my time to
propose a change to CF and I frankly won't bother in future unless the
change is extremely important to me personally. This all comes down
to a lack of time on everybody's part. Is it not time to consider
applying for funds to employ more people to be dedicated to CF? I
would have thought that the community would strongly support this.
Regards, Jon
--
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Dr Jon Blower Tel: +44 118 378 5213 (direct line)
Technical Director Tel: +44 118 378 8741 (ESSC)
Reading e-Science Centre Fax: +44 118 378 6413
ESSC Email: jdb at mail.nerc-essc.ac.uk
University of Reading
3 Earley Gate
Reading RG6 6AL, UK
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Received on Fri Jun 27 2008 - 03:59:51 BST
