Doing it right (Was: HEADS UP! MAJOR change to FreeBSD/sparc64)

[Stephen McKay]

On Monday, 15th March 2004, Dag-Erling =?iso-8859-1?q?Sm=F8rgrav?= wrote:

>Stephen McKay <smckay at internode.on.net> writes:
>> On Monday, 15th March 2004, Kris Kennaway wrote:
>> > No-one donated their time to do it that way.
>> I don't think that's relevant.  The question is whether it's the right way
>> to do it or not.  If what I've suggested is technically correct (and that's
>> what I believe) then that's how it should be done.
>
>Armchair generals are a dime a dozen.  Competent developers aren't
>quite as easy to come by.

True and true, but that's not the point.  While you and Kris were defending
your territory with this style of comment, Garance explained his reasoning,
and it's technically sound.  That wins the argument, as it should.

I think it is a legitimate (and helpful) thing for developers to question
the technical merits of changes even if they aren't personally contributing
much code.  It can't simply be the case that whoever has the time to commit
the most code changes wins.  Changes must be in the long term interests of
the project.  Hence questioning code changes can be as much a contribution
as writing new code if it avoids a future problem.

Stephen.