As of recent, we had quite a lot of discussion about process. In true open-source spirit, it was a fairly open discussion, with everybody offering their perspectives and experience. However, while we surely learned many things, it does not seem like we're going anywhere.

For a quick experiment, I tried to assess whether the discussion actually reflects the needs of Boost developers, so I created a table of Boost developers sorted by the number of commits in 2010. It is here:

       http://tinyurl.com/5suwfbn

It seems that 5 top Boost comitters did not participate much in recent discussions. And going down the list, it seems like many of active developers did not say anything, while most of discussions is fueled by folks who don't commit much.

Of course, everybody can offer valuable thoughts, but if the goal is to fix things for Boost developers, it would make sense if developers say that needs fixing, as opposed to other people doing it for them.

Maybe I suggest that for some time, we outright ban freeform discussion about process, and instead, we restrict them to threads started by a Boost developers and saying this: "I am maintainer of X, and had N commits and M trac changes in the last year. I most hate P1, P2 and P3. I would propose that we use T1, T2, and T3 to fix that". Then, everybody could join to suggest better way of fixing P1, P2 and P3 -- without making up other supposed problems.

Thoughts?

*sigh* I usually try to stay out of this kind of discussions like svn vs git for 3 reasons: - I very fast stop following what it is about as it goes into depth without explanations. Actually I have the feeling it is more about "being right" than explaining for dolts like me. - I have no problem with svn - I have no time. Really. I don't. But it seems I have to say my word to avoid being faced with a matter decided without me. So my situation is simple. I have no time (I might have mentioned that already ;-) ). And the time I have is costly because any distraction goes at the cost of MSM. I use all my free time to code or imagine cool new features I can add. So either someone can make me get what I'd gain by investing time in switching to git (I repeat, I have no problem with svn, it does what I need with little cost) or for all practical matters, count me against switching. Right now, all I do is commit my development changes into the trunk, then once every 3 months start a long merge operation (which I do in the background, so no cost). How simpler than that can it be? If all I gain is avoiding getting all of boost on my (big) hard disk, then I will happily prefer paying the 1$ / 10GB and keep the time, thanks.