Re: contributing to Emacs

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: David Masterson <dsmasterson@gmail.com>
> Cc: hi-angel@yandex.ru,  arne_bab@web.de,  ams@gnu.org,  luangruo@yahoo.com,
>   philipk@posteo.net,  emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Date: Mon, 19 Jun 2023 15:47:05 -0700
> 
> Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> >> From: David Masterson <dsmasterson@gmail.com>
> >> 
> >> Would you say that Emacs still has development practices from the
> >> 80s/90s that, given the chance and newer toolsets, you could see being
> >> done differently and better?
> >
> > What are "development practices from the 80s/90s"?
> 
> I'm not a developer of Emacs -- I've kibitzed around in it off and on
> for 40+ years.  In the 80s, there was reliance on email/news for comms
> (there wasn't much else available).  It worked good, but things got
> misplaced once in awhile because of the disconnect between email & news.

If this is about problems between email and news, then I don't think
it's relevant anymore, since hardly anyone here uses news anymore for
submitting changes and discussing them.

If I misunderstood, and "development practices from the 80s/90s"
something else, please elaborate.

> > Practical suggestions for changes that would make it easier are
> > welcome, but they must not make the lives of the current developers
> > significantly harder.
> 
> This is what I thought.  You, as a current developer, should be
> commenting on suggestions from the standpoint of "will it make my life
> harder?" (with a grain of flexibility).

That's one consideration, yes.  The other is what are the advantages
of the suggested changes.  Their balance is what drives the final
decisions.