A few months ago a few individual started submitting patches against the advices of the core developers. The features were sometimes interesting, sometimes not. The code style did not integrate well the rest of Dillo's code. (not to mention the form in which the patches were presented).
Oh that's really great, to hear such things now instead of when such feedback was wanted. 1. I had never any advice from any of the core developers, I was simply ignored. Maybe I should have taken the hint sooner, sorry for that. 2. As I said, I had no feedback, so really don't know what you thought about the code style. Perhaps I didn't make use of the wonderful CCC nightmare construction, so you're right, my code style didn't integrate well with the rest of at least Dillo's IO code. 3. Form of patches? I used the recommended diff options. Other than that, I could have split up the patches into smaller ones, but no one asked for that so why even bother.
The maintainers of Dillo decided these contributions were not good for Dillo, for many reasons. While you might disagree, similar decisions were made during the development of Dillo, and the result is the great browser we have now. We have the focus and we have a plan.
Pardon me, but the main problem is that you don't communicate, at least not with me and many other patch makers (Kiyo, anyone? See mailinglist archive for more examples). I have no problems with rejections, but I can tell you that silent rejections can be rather frustrating. People spend time writing a patch for Dillo, they try to improve it, and you in return simply ignore them. Rejecting a patch is unfortunately something you must do most of the times, but at least explain what your problem is with it. Don't ignore it and then afterwards say what you just said please. Dillo has some really ugly code in it, but if you say that loud and clear you will be insulted and spit at. If you try to clean it up a bit you'd be ignored. You may have a focus and a plan, but oh so nice of you to share it with all of us. Last time I looked on the site one of the main focus was to get money.
Not to take control to see the one feature they like be included.
Https is a feature that not only I like to have, but is an essential feature for a browser. I never tried to push it, if you thought so then you understood it wrong. I only tried to convince why my way of implementing it is better than some other ways, but that discussion died an early death by lack of any feedback. I also didn't try to push the "united Dillo" patch through someone's throat, it was discussed on the mailinglist and the conclusion was that it may be a useful feature, but that it shouldn't be the default behaviour. I don't know what one feature the IO.c cleanup patch tried to push, I can only imagine.
I understand how a Linus Torvald saying no to a patch for Linux might induce more respect to young coders than for a smaller project like Dillo. But you should learn to repect Jorge, Sebatian, Livio, and the others contributors (and not only the so-called "core developer"). These people put a lot of their energy and sweat into Dillo over the years, because that's what it takes to make a successful project.
As I said above, you don't even bother saying no. And I do respect people, but I can't help it if criticism on _code_ is takes as a personal attack. I honestly never expected that, must be my naivete. You are the ones that are insulting people, stabbing them in their back when they turn away, with the official announcement and emails like this. I can only speak for myself, but from my point of view I was totally ignored, and when I gave up and went away, I get one insult after to other thrown after me. Hidden in general speak so that you can still claim to be respectful, with your mud dirty hands hidden behind your back.
Dillo is an Open Source project, and anybody whom's not happy with the development policy could start his own project with it. And he'll be welcome. But nobody did so far, and I take it as a confirmation that one needs more than being vocal in mailing list to maintain a project like Dillo. It takes dedication and talent.
This is really a low comment. If all went as you make it seem then you could perhaps say this, but you chronically ignore any outside efforts. I was encouraged by the text on the website to contribute to Dillo. Personally I missed https, so I wrote a https patch. I first wanted to make a https dpi, but that turned out to be rather hard, at least it couldn't be done very elegantly with a dpi, so I added it to Dillo. That got me rolling and I also started doing some more, like cleaning up io.c. I really start repeating myself, but as I said, I had no feedback at all, so in the end gave up. Now you make it seem like I'm not happy with the development policy, but how must I know what it is? If I follow the information on Dillo's website then I did follow Dillo's development policy. I was willing to spend a lot of time in Dillo, also in the future, I didn't gave up so soon as most other patch makers, so I don't see how I was lacking in dedication. Now you say that because I'm not happy with a for me unknown policy, I could have started my own project, while all I wanted was to improve Dillo... And because I didn't that suddenly means that you are dedicated and have talent? May I also remind you that the mailinglist is the Dillo developer mailinglist, so actually the only communication way for outside developers? And you also seem to imply that I'm only vocal on the mailinglist, ignoring the fact that most of those mails are patch or Dillo code related. Only way I'm too vocal is that I write damn long emails somehow, but I really can't help that.
"The main job of a maintainer is to say No", said Linus Torvald. That's what happened. Nothing more: people were not happy to see their patch rejected and they tried to push back. Dillo's still active, and not less than it was before: do not confuse bubbling in the mailing list with activity. Out-of-control patch submissions is not equivalent to improvement.
That is simply a lie. That is NOT what happened. What happened is that you ignored all patches and almost all our emails. And then suddenly out of thin air post a very aggressive insulting official announcement from the "core developers". If you disagree then you live in another universe or are talking about other people than Frank and me. If that bubbling on the mailinglist had gotten more attention, Dillo could by now have utf-8, https, ftp, frames, tabs, I18N and a lot other things that I can't think of right now, and probably even more because less people would be scared away. Nice to call it "out-of-control" patch submission, perhaps you should control it? Maybe giving a short reply to such patches like "no, we don't like this, don't submit such stupid patches" would cure the problem? Maybe a healthy outside curiosity and patch submission is indeed evil, but somehow I doubt that... Also to compare how Dillo developers say no (by ignoring it) with Linus Torvals' way of saying no (actually saying "no" with explanation) is a bit lame.
The people who made Dillo are still there, and new contributors are joining. Those whom wanted their features included so badly prefered to leave rather than change their attitude and work the issues.
Makes me really wonder who here really has an attitude problem. First you more or less demand that we leave, and now you say that we prefer to leave instead of doing something about our attitude, while your attitude is the one that should change. Good start would be to grow up and handle criticism on code sanely instead of handling it as personal attacks, bad attitude and what else. In the time that I followed the mailinglist there was no one that tried to push his code into Dillo, all they did was implement features they would like to have and shared it with the rest.
I guess we're back to normal: a sane and nice working environment. Please keep contributing.
You made it very clear that you in reality don't appreciate real contributions, good luck with keeping up the facade. But everyone can read the mailinglist archive and see for their self how it really went. Unfortunately most won't and will trust what you say, lucky you. I may be wrong and maybe there is active development going on, but if so, it all happens in the background, hidden from us. All we see is a rather silent mailinglist and very little CVS activity for quite a while now. I really hope that the "core developers" will see the light once, but I don't have too much hope. I'm aware that it's impossible to reason with you, so I won't even try. That is also why I ignored the announcement, it was just a flamebait. Good luck, also with Dillo, Indan