Comment 26 for bug 1049082
Revision history for this message
| Anthony Harrington (linuxchemist) wrote Re: The "hundredpapercuts" project will make the Ubuntu experience blaze gloriously like the sun! | #26 |
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73416ba
(Get the code!)
I hope you don't mind my tweaking the name of this bug slightly so that it makes sense and reflects your intention ;)
I have a few thoughts people might agree with.
It seems to me that the issue over the years has become something like this: Those who created a program in question themselves or actively code for the programs that make up the infrastructure of ubuntu have got their hands full adding features and fixing major bugs etc
Comparatively smaller bugs and smaller changes which the general userbase point out should be changed tend to slip through the cracks a bit and become the focus of groups like the 100 papercuts. However overall, i think it's accurate to say that there is perhaps a difference in programming expertise between the creators and those hoping to fix a small bug here and there, and certainly a difference in familiarity of the procedures for helping out as well.
It seems to result in a situation where major release versions of programs are churned out, complete with new features and no/almost no show-stopping bugs, but so many possible userbase-inspired additions have missed their chance because noone knew how to contribute or it was too complicated to do so. Then there are users who will report a bug but have no clue how to gather useful data about it - and can suddenly be met with comments as short as "can you bisect it?" referring to 'git bisect' to see which commit caused the problem. Let's assume the average user is not going to want to build the program from source to see what the problem is exactly; they want to be helpful and report something that's not so good but rarely want to/are able to go through the hassle of making the change themself, so they must wait until someone is free to look at it. (This step is understandably slow and for good reason - there are other things to be done first!)
Ubuntu brainstorming was popular a while back and served a purpose because a lot of cool new USERBASE DESIRED features and changes were thought up, but as many said later, the ideas were generally ignored and left just as ideas. (Perhaps people didn't know how they would go about implementing one of these ideas?)
Generally, there are a few really talented programmers in the linux world but they've really got their hands full focusing on what they enjoy most/what they feel is most important and it's slow going for a beginner to reach their level of expertise.