On Sat, Jul 07, 2012 at 11:36:41AM +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> >> I do basically agree with this. I was reflecting on the bug tracker
> >> issue (or lack thereof) for unrelated reasons earlier today and I
> >> think there are some very nice things to recommend the current
> >> email-based system, which are the reasons you identify above. Perhaps
> >> the area where it falls down is structured searches (such as for
> >> "closed" or "wontfix") and tracking progress of related, complex, or
> >> multi-part issues that span multiple root email messages.
> >
> > I normally assume "friction" is just something that slows you down from
> > attaining a goal, but open source development is only _possible_ because
> > of the low friction communication available via the Internet. It isn't
> > that open source development would be slower --- it would probably not
> > exist in its current form (think shareware diskettes for an
> > alternative).
>
> I've never thought of it in terms of "friction", but I think that term
> makes a lot of sense. And it sums up pretty much one of the things
> that I find the most annoying with the commitfest app - in the end it
> boils down to the same thing. I find it annoying that whenever someone
> posts a new review or new comments, one has to *also* go into the CF
> app and add them there. Which leads to a lot of friction, which in
> turn leads to people not actually putting their comments in there,
> which decreases the value of the tool.
For me, we can't just say that our process is the the way it is because
we have always done it that way, or because we are too lazy to change
it. I think most of us have a gut feeling that our process is good, but
we have to have some logic behind why we are doing things differently
than most other projects, I think "friction" does explain a lot of it.
-- Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us EnterpriseDB
http://enterprisedb.com
+ It's impossible for everything to be true. +
