Re: Rant about ChangeLog entries and commit messages

[Robert Kiesling <kiesling@earthlink.net>]

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> On 12/3/07, Richard Kenner <kenner@vlsi1.ultra.nyu.edu> wrote:
> > > Sorry, but again, this is not a good enough justification to me.
> > > We do a lot of things different than "The GNU Project".
> > > So do plenty of parts of the "official GNU project".
> > > They use different coding standards, bug tracking systems, version
> > > control systems, checkin policies, etc, than each other.
> >
> > Yes, but none of those are visible other than to the development community.
> > People who obtain the source distributions of projects don't get to see
> > those things.  They DO see things like the ChangeLog format and coding
> > and documentation conventions and THOSE are the things that need to be
> > common among GNU projects.
> 
> Except they aren't, across large parts of the GNU project.
> 
> You may find it the same in the "traditional" parts of the GNU project
> (IE coreutils, emacs, etc).
> It's certainly not the same across any of the newer parts of the GNU project.

That's because, although the GNU project strictly - and correctly,
experience has shown - monitors its code base, with the propagation 
of the Free Software development model, newer Free Software 
contributors who maintain their code on sites like sourceforge.net,
are subject to commercial pressures that the older, ivory-tower
authors in general are shielded from.

It's impossible to convince someone who wants your "niche" for a
quickie IPO that maintaining code for more than two or three years 
is worth the investment.

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