[OT] does trolling improve open source projects?

[Rob Landley]

On Sunday 11 September 2005 07:34, Robin Farine wrote:
>> Rob, *you* are 'the troll' here, ie an entity living under a bridge

Ooh, the ever popular "I know you are but what am I" comeback.  Classic.  And 
I must say, this bridge has marvelous internet access and plenty of 
electrical outlets...

> I do not think Rob or anyone is in general rejecting a fix or a
> feature if it is sufficiently motivated. But as good as the
> proposed change can be, it all depends on the tone used to promote
> it.

Aside from the fact that I don't care where good code (or a good idea) comes 
from if somebody brings it to my attention (and I do read the _replies_ to 
people I'm spam-blocking, like this one)...

How could I possibly block a fix when Erik is the project maintainer and there 
are nine active svn committers so far this year?

svn log -v | grep " 2005-" | awk '{print $3}' | sort -u
andersen
landley
lethal
mjn3
pgf
pkj
solar
vapier
vodz

I don't even know who some of those people _are_.

I have the luxury of spam blocking people I don't want to listen to because 
there's at least 8 other people they can theoretically convince to check in 
their fix, and of course anybody else I'm not spam-blocking can forward the 
patch to me if they think it's good.  If the other 8 people aren't listening 
to them either, and nobody else takes interest in the patch (or no patches 
ever get submitted), isn't that more likely to _support_ my decision than 
undermine it?

The standard way of calling a troll's bluff is "shut up and show me the code".  
Is there some specific patch or patches somebody would like to forward me?  
Are there any patches under discussion?  Either forward me the patches, or 
Don't Feed The Troll. :)

By the way, it's standard practice to mention the name of the guy whose patch 
or idea it was, even if somebody else does the actual checkin.

svn log -v | grep -ic "Rainer"
0
svn log -v | grep -ic "Weikusat"
0
svn log -v | grep -ic "sncag" log.txt
0

Something in the web-based bug system I've missed, perhaps?  (I've only read 
through about half of that so far, and people generally use nicknames there 
so I have no idea who is who anyway.  But neither "weikusat" nor "rainer" 
show up on a google of site:bugs.busybox.net.)

I don't twit-list sources of good patches, no matter how personally annoying 
they might be.  (I vaguely remember I once had Paul Fox in my spam filter, I 
forget why.  But he started producing good comments and good patches, 
convinced me to unblock him.  These days he has svn access, which Erik hands 
out, not me...)

Rob

(And yeah, it's possible to disagree about patches.  Right now mjn3 and I have 
a disagreement over uniq.c.  I still think he's a marvelous coder.)

(P.S.  On an unrelated note, rooting around in the archives I notice I have 
the busybox "less" patch bookmarked.  Oops.  Need to look at that... :)