Re: Feature freeze progress report

> People aren't willing to hel pme in even a simple task of maintaining
an
> 8.3 patches status page, so why would they want to help with something
> larger. I am not going to make my job harder only to find out no one
> wants to help.

I thought about volunteering to do this, but:

1. I am a little warry of inserting myself (as an outsider) into a major
controversy as my first contribution to the project.

2. It seems like it would be difficult or impossible for an outsider to
do this well. Essentially, I'd have to read every message on -hackers,
-patches, and -committers, and try to figure out which of those messages
amounted to a change in status for which patches, and then update the
status of the patches.

Example: Tom says "what about XYZ? ISTM this will have to wait for
8.4". The person who wrote the patch replies with "I think XYZ is not
an issue because of ABC." It's not clear (at least to me) whether the
patch is now in play for 8.3 again or whether it's still on hold.

In addition, if some discussion is happening via private email (which it
sounds like it is), then this wouldn't be complete even if it were done
perfectly.

I write web-based workflow applications for a living, so in theory I'm
more amenable to the idea of helping out in that way. But it seems to
me that right now there's no consensus on whether we need this at all,
and if so what it should do.

I don't really want to get involved in the central argument about what
the "right" way of doing this is, but I think Bruce's proposal to put a
patch number in every email that hasn't got one can't possibly be any
worse than what we're doing now, and it might be better, so why not?
I'm even willing help with this if there is consensus on it.

Thanks,

...Robert