3 ms·

The first one always takes way longer than the code itself deserves. Most of the work is figuring out the unwritten rules, not writing the patch.

yu3zhou4 7mo ago
Can confirm that it also happens in other complex systems! Still a lot of good time and the novelty factor helps with pushing through
seb1204 7mo ago
Sand that after so many years these rules are still not written down.
fooker 7mo ago
This is a big problem in open source that seems taboo to discuss. In my opinion, unwritten rules are for gatekeeping. And if a new person follows all the unwritten rules, magically there's no one willing to review. I think this is how large BFDL-style open source projects slowly become less and less relevant over the next few decades.
- cromka 7mo ago
  Agreed. The level of aggressive gatekeepers is just crazy, take Linux ARM mailing list for example. I found the Central and Eastern Europeans particularly aggressive there and I'm saying this as on myself. They sure do like to feel special there, with very little soft skills.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
- tossandthrow 7mo ago
  This will likely be alleviated when Ai first projects take over as important OSS projects. Fir these projects everything "tribal" has to be explicitly codified. On a more general note: this is likely going to have a rather big impact on software in general - the "engineer to company can not afford to loose" is likely loosing their moat entirely.
- RustyRussell 7mo ago
  In the small, it's still a meritocracy. A patch like this is obviously correct and I expect to get in first try (maybe with a formatting fix by the maintainer). For large works, the burden shifts, since you are increasing the maintenance load. Now we have the question of who will do the future work, and that requires judgement of the importance of the work and/or the author, and hence is a fundamentally political question.
gus_massa 7mo ago
Is this discussed in the article? How hard was to deal with the unwritten rules in this case?

yu3zhou4 7mo ago

Can confirm that it also happens in other complex systems! Still a lot of good time and the novelty factor helps with pushing through

seb1204 7mo ago

Sand that after so many years these rules are still not written down.

fooker 7mo ago

This is a big problem in open source that seems taboo to discuss. In my opinion, unwritten rules are for gatekeeping. And if a new person follows all the unwritten rules, magically there's no one willing to review. I think this is how large BFDL-style open source projects slowly become less and less relevant over the next few decades.

cromka 7mo ago
Agreed. The level of aggressive gatekeepers is just crazy, take Linux ARM mailing list for example. I found the Central and Eastern Europeans particularly aggressive there and I'm saying this as on myself. They sure do like to feel special there, with very little soft skills.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
tossandthrow 7mo ago
This will likely be alleviated when Ai first projects take over as important OSS projects. Fir these projects everything "tribal" has to be explicitly codified. On a more general note: this is likely going to have a rather big impact on software in general - the "engineer to company can not afford to loose" is likely loosing their moat entirely.
RustyRussell 7mo ago
In the small, it's still a meritocracy. A patch like this is obviously correct and I expect to get in first try (maybe with a formatting fix by the maintainer). For large works, the burden shifts, since you are increasing the maintenance load. Now we have the question of who will do the future work, and that requires judgement of the importance of the work and/or the author, and hence is a fundamentally political question.

gus_massa 7mo ago

Is this discussed in the article? How hard was to deal with the unwritten rules in this case?