a simple request: apply all outstanding patches.

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Wed, 17 May 2006, Natanael Copa wrote:

> That is probably also why he announced a feature freeze. Maybe we
> could get a list of things/patches that are supposed to get into the
> 1.2 release, so we can check if our earlier submitted patches are
> forgotten or not? If we find anything missing on the list, we maybe
> could ask for a re-evaluation if the patch should be included into
> the 1.2, put on hold til after the 1.2 release or rejected.

that sounds reasonable.  as i think about it, there's an interesting
parallel with ethernet traffic analysis here.  people familiar with
the ethernet technology know how CSMA/CD works.  if you have very
little traffic, then almost all packets get through.

as the traffic increases, you start getting the occasional collision,
which forces a re-transmission.  as you increase the traffic, you keep
getting more collisions, which cause more re-transmissions, which
cause more collisions, etc., etc. and the whole system becomes
unusable.

i suspect patch submission works much the same way.  as long as there
are few submissions, no problem.  but if you start to overwhelm the
maintainer and patches start taking longer to be processed, submitters
assume their patch got lost so they re-submit, which puts more work on
the maintainer, which causes him to fall further behind, which
inspires submitters to re-submit again ... you get the idea.

rday