[wp-hackers] Community Views on Now and the Future

[Ryan Boren]

Mark Jaquith wrote:
> I think we're going in the right direction, for the most part.  To be  
> honest, without Matt and Ryan acting as a reality check, a lot of  
> "bridge burning" code would be going in (and coming out) of  WordPress.  

Right now we have a funnel commit policy, and I, for the most part, am 
the end of the funnel.  This is mainly to avoid having such bridge 
burning arguments happen in the repository rather than in ticket 
comments.  But, we have several regular and trusted contributors now, 
many of whom I consider authoritative in certain areas of the code.  I 
wouldn't mind opening up commit access to them.  I know Matt and others 
like having a narrow funnel, even if not necessarily me, but I wouldn't 
mind broadening the funnel.

> That might be fine for us PHP jockey types, but not for  the general 
> users of WordPress.  WordPress has a huge user base, and  (perhaps 
> unfortunately), that requires that we always be mindful of  how our 
> changes will affect existing users.  While I've always been  open to a 
> more authoritative role in development, I do not envy Matt  or Ryan one 
> bit for the decisions they have to make for the benefit  of WP's 
> userbase, against the wishes of the WP development  community.  It's a 
> thankless job, (and apparently one that's driving  Ryan to the bottle!) :-D

Every feature we've ever added and every decision we've made has been 
met with resistance, some of it hysterical and threatening.  I dread 
reading my email some days.

It's hard to know if you're doing the right thing.  Sometimes you have 
to go for it and be ready to correct mistakes once history shows you 
were wrong.  Now where did I set my glass of wine? :-)

> The Trac mailing list is one of the best things to happen to  WordPress 
> in quite a while.  Seriously.  And Trac tickets have now  become places 
> for in-depth discussions of patches.  Trac tickets no  longer feel like 
> life rafts hoping that they'll run into a passing  ship.  MichaelH and 
> Ryan (Boren) had an amazing back-and-forth over  the course of about 4 
> days with nearly 30 messages posted and 12  patch revisions put up!

That was exciting and definitely a high point.  I hope we can do more of 
that.  It will take discipline from those with commit access (me). 
Sometimes I work on something and want to push into the repository  so 
people can try it out, especially during the early alpha phase when 
we're experimenting and the code is flying.  I need contain my 
excitement and make sure others look things over first.

Ryan