[wp-hackers] The problem with Contributions and This Thread

[Jacob Santos]

You can not say this is a community driven project and then completely
ignore the community aspect of the phrase. Is the project 5% community
driven, 10%, 20% or more? I also see contradictions and logical
inconsistencies in several of the statements and direction of the WordPress
development. I went over the WordPress Decision presentation by Jane Wells
at Portland and when you have a hierarchy where the contributors of patches
are so far down as to be irrelevant, then yes, you do have a corporate
process. One of the examples itself was one of a company and I quote, "You
can't walk into a Microsoft meeting and expect to be heard." Well, the quote
is not verbatim.

You are making this personal and I suspect you are not viewing this
appropriately. The problem has been and I suspect always will be the time to
get a patch in to core. I should also clarify that feedback is more
important than simply getting a patch in core. If you not only hear nothing,
but also not have your patch committed. This is not limited to me and if you
look at the history, there are plenty of potential contributors that never
were given the chance to be more than causal contributors. I have said in
the past and continue to say, that the turn around for patches needs to be
improved. As a user of WordPress, my desire is to see WordPress grow and
continue to be improved.

If the statement, "Well, join another community or project." Then the
statement should be clarified to mean, "Join a project that actually cares
about its contributors and gives feedback on patches in a timely manner."
This statement should NEVER be uttered by an official of the project and the
fact that you and others continue to defend and repeat the statement may
continue the downward trend of fewer contributors. If the desire is to have
mainly leads developing WordPress, then I believe you are moving in the
right path.

Okay, I am most likely wrong and I hope that I am. I seriously do. There are
areas where patches are consistency committed in a timely manner and patches
will probably continue to be made in those areas.

I am not wrong in that the current development process increases the
difficulty of getting patches in core. It is obvious that there is nothing I
can say at this point to convince you or any of the leads to change the
process, so I'm simply going to disappear until I have further proof for my
point.


Jacob Santos

PS: I did stop contributing around WordPress 2.8 and only contributed a few
patches since that time. Of course, this last development cycle, I
contributed around 7 patches, of which, 0 went into WordPress. I didn't even
get any feedback other then, "It is not my area."