Re: LYNX-DEV Lynx development process

[Mike Brown]

>    I propose that the Lynx development process be made a bit more formal.

No one is going to argue with that, but from what I have seen, no one
currently involved in the development process is willing to step forward
and make the necessary commitments. Everyone is just doing this in their
spare time as a hobby (or for some, an unhealthy obsession). We talk about
problems, suggest solutions, and program the changes ourselves, submitting
patches to the lists.

I made one initiative some time ago to expand the supported character sets
to include PC codepage 850, which is a jumbled version of ISO 8859-1. It
was an easy thing to do, and didn't even require knowing how to program in
C. It was certainly not a necessary addition to Lynx, nor was it something
anyone of the other programmers (except Klaus, who wasn't on the list at
that time) would have bothered with, and going into it I had no idea if it
would be accepted. I just went ahead and did it and said, "here you go." 

More recently I made a second initiative to organize and perhaps shorten
the output of 'lynx -help' (or 'lynx -<invalid option>'). Again this was
something that was entirely inconsequential and was not a priority for any
of the programmers, and I still have no idea whether it will be accepted. 
I put forth the proposal to the list and to my pleasant surprise it
generated a fair amount of discussion. Some tangential issues were raised
and partially resolved in the process, and now all that is left is for me
to make a couple of final decisions and perhaps some code edits and put it
forth to the list with another, "here you go." 

One person pointed out that I'm being "too nice," too democratic about
something that has at best an even chance of being accepted, but so what? 
Yes, I wish we had a more formal process, too, so I could rest assured
that I wasn't wasting hours and hours of my time. But we can't make that
kind of demand of the programmers, all of whose time and efforts are
voluntary above and beyond the status quo, which actually would have been
to leave Lynx alone after UKans stopped "official" development. 

Sorry I can't say there's an easy way to break out of this situation.

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