Re: On Contributing To Emacs

[Po Lu]

xenodasein--- via "Emacs development discussions." <emacs-devel@gnu.org>
writes:

> - Development velocity is glacial. With releases around once per year
> and there being no easily accessible distribution mechanism for
> development updates, high-velocity projects or projects that must adapt
> to a changing ecosystem (straight.el satisfies both of those criteria)
> simply do not have a place in Emacs core as it exists today.

Why does a package manager need to constantly adapt to a changing
ecosystem, or be developed at a very high velocity?

That doesn't make sense to me: package managers are one of the
cornerstones of an ecosystem, so I would expect that ecosystems tend to
adapt to their package managers, and not the other way around.

> - The tools that must be used for contributing to Emacs are extremely
> antiquated, and difficult to use for most developers, especially newer
> ones who form the majority of the potential contributor base.

That is simply untrue.

> - The CLA signing process is inexplicably slow and opaque. With most
> other projects, you sign the CLA in two minutes through a web interface
> and you are on your way. With Emacs, you have to send an email, which
> may or may not eventually receive a reply with the appropriate form,
> which you then have to manually send back, and the whole process often
> takes months with no communication whatsoever from the FSF about the
> reason for the holdup, especially for contributors outside the United
> States. I can point to a number of documented examples of this (i.e.
> contributors waiting multiple months with no reply from the FSF,
> despite many follow-ups).

I have actually seen (in person) various problems resulting from signing
legal documents via online forms destroy pieces of software, so I
strongly support the FSF's position on how the copyright assignment must
be signed.

> - The mailing list which is the sole form of communication for Emacs
> core development feels exclusionary to me. There is a heavy backbone
> of established culture and conventions around the mailing list, which
> are to my knowledge not documented anywhere and instead exist as
> unwritten rules of discourse.

Why not ask?