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Re: Why not contribute? (to GCC)
On Friday 23 April 2010 21:10, Richard Kenner wrote:
> I've happened to be looking at a number of other free-software projects
> recently (having nothing to do with compilers) and find the quality of the
> code ABSOLUTELY APALLING.
That's because you didn't look at non-open code. It's no better.
> The formatting is random and very hard to read.
> There are almost no comments. There are few, if any, indications of what
> each function is supposed to do.
This is typical for most code, open and closed.
> And many of these projects have no
> documentation AT ALL except for some small FAQs or Wikis.
>
> When we ask "why is contributing to GCC so hard", we must never forget that
> a large part of the answer to that question is that we have much higher
> STANDARDS than most free-software projects in terms of code quality
> and documentation.
And such attitude (denial that "we" have any problems) is typical too...
> I don't believe that lessening those standards to
> increase contributions would ever be a good thing in the long term.
This statement carries an implicit assumption that the only barrier
for contribution to GCC is the "high quality of code required".
This is not true. For one, copyright assignment requirement
is an untypical requirement for open-source world,
and may turn away some contributors.
--
vda