Re: Call for 7.5 feature completion - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

> Not being the author, I don't know. And in the case of PITR, the pre-7.4 
> author is different than the post-7.4 author. However, if I was 
> personally responsible for holding up the release of a project due to a 
> feature that I had vowed to complete, I would feel morally compelled to 
> get it done. If I had then asked for, and was granted, an extra 15-30 
> days I would feel even more personally responsible and under greater 
> pressure.
> 
> If, however, the project made the release without waiting, I would feel 
> simultaneously relieved and possibly a little bitter. Possibly a little 
> bitter in that either what I was working on wasn't perceived as 
> sufficiently valuable to hold up a release for 15-30 days, or that my 
> word regarding the completion status was insufficient for the project to 
> trust me. Let me reiterate the words "possibly" and "little." But in 
> open source projects, a developer willing to contribute hundreds, 
> possibly thousands of hours of his own time is particularly invaluable.
> 
> I can tell you that, in economic models that have studied human behavior 
> with respect to unemployment insurance, for example, the re-employment 
> rates are clustered at the tails: when someone is first unemployed and 
> when the insurance is about to expire. It's an inappropriate analogy 
> because the project lives on from release to release, instead of having 
> a drop-dead date at which point no future changes would be made ad 
> infinitum, but it paints a useful picture. I'm willing to bet that CVS 
> commit rates mirror the above behavior.
> 
> Unlike unemployment benefits, releasing the software without the feature 
> essentially just extends the development period another 6 months, the 
> work will intensify at the new perceived tails, and the process 
> repeated. There are probably econometric papers that model the software 
> development release cycle that could give quantitative arguments. I'm 
> not arguing I'm right and your wrong, btw. I'm just pointing out some of 
> the possibilities. In fact, for one developer it might be the "code 
> production maximizing condition" to give them another 6 months and for 
> another, creating the pressure associated with a 15-30 day extension 
> where the world is standing still awaiting their patch...
> 
> Mike Mascari


Yesterday I have issued a posting which had to do with "motivation". 
This is Open Source - there is no boss which tells somebody to finish 
something. Therefore we must MOTIVATE people.
Has anybody read Sim Riggs posting earlier in the thread.
There is one paragraph which makes my alarm bells ring VERY LOUD:

"This is all rather disheartening, having laid out a time plan months
back, noting some of this. Yes, I am working on it, and no, I'm not hand
waving, but I do take time off every million keystrokes or so."

If somebody who has done a GREAT JOB is disheartened by the way his work 
is treated it is really time to start thinking ...
From my very personal point of view Mike absolutely right; why not give 
it a try. I guess Simon and Alvaro deserve some more time and we should 
give those guys a limited time frame to finish their work.

Recall, it's all about motivation ...
Regards,
    Hans


-- 
Cybertec Geschwinde u Schoenig
Schoengrabern 134, A-2020 Hollabrunn, Austria
Tel: +43/720/10 1234567 or +43/664/233 90 75
www.cybertec.at, www.postgresql.at, kernel.cybertec.at