On 07/18/2013 08:19 AM, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
On 07/18/2013 01:48 PM, Gergely Nagy wrote:A friendly upstream *is* important in a comparsion chart. Working with an unfriendly, or even hostile upstream is not something you want to have in a core component of an operating system.Friendliness has nothing to do with accepting every single patch that people sent in. Just because an upstream project doesn't take your patches doesn't mean they don't like you but rather it should give you a hint to check whether your changes make sense.
The trouble with that is, it's entirely possible to simply disagree about whether a particular set of changes make sense. If upstream wants development to go in one direction, and you want it to go in a conflicting direction, then your patches taking it in that other direction will not be accepted - even though they may make sense in the context of that other direction. Similarly, if upstream wants to make a particular set of changes, and you think those changes don't make sense, but rather than wanting to change things in a different way you want to leave things alone, you can't even submit patches to support your preferred outcome (since your preferred outcome is "no changes") - and you certainly can't keep them from making the changes. The upstream is not required to accept your preferred changes or to hold back the changes they want because you don't like them, of course. But you aren't required to use the code the upstream produces, either. ...except when you need its functionality, and there's lock-in preventing you from (sufficiently easily) switching to some alternative. Which may be relevant to the case at hand. -- The Wanderer Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any side of it. Every time you let somebody set a limit they start moving it. - LiveJournal user antonia_tiger