> Bill stopped what he was doing, fetched the sources for emacs (using ftp), found the source of the bug, fixed it, and sent off a patch. That would be far mor

> Bill stopped what he was doing, fetched the sources for emacs (using ftp), found the source of the bug, fixed it, and sent off a patch. That would be far more difficult if the source code was in a poor state. Some libraries are easier to patch than others, I can think of a couple of libraries I've wanted to quickly patch and soon (not soon enough) realised that it's unpatchable because it's a mess (or perhaps even worse, is too clever by half and has far too much indirection and not enough comments) and would need extensive surgery. That's not to diminish the strength of your story about Bill Schelter but only to point out that it's easier to do your best work if others are doing theirs.