[FFmpeg-devel] Democratization

[Marth64]

Hi,

Re: Softworks,
> As a contributor, I'm expecting my contributions to:
> - Not be ignored
> - Receive one of these three responses:
>  1. OK (and get merged in a timely manner)
>  2. No (for whichever reason)
>  3. Ok but needs changes

The contribution is more likely to be ignored or responded to with a heavy
tone.

And I still blame our infrastructure.
The process is annoying, so people’s time is wasted, then they get annoyed,
then the mood isn’t great.

Who wants to spend the time to decipher say, 30 commits as individual
emails or learn custom software to do this, just to review PRs? And then
try to respond line by line in dull monospace emails.

This is all time wasted. By the time it’s over I’d have spent 50% of the
time trying to parse the different pieces of the patch and then with the
remaining time actually reading, reviewing, and testing patch. And if it
were my patch, and someone told me to fix some issues, I have to go through
the whole rebasing and patch production process again. Even if it takes 15
minutes per patch, it’s such a waste of time. It adds up.

Now imagine a scenario where there is a modern workflow, possibly with even
bots that can point out nit issues, or with discussion features where one
can point comfortably to a syntax highlighted line. Or one where you ask me
to fix something and it’s not a big deal, I just push a new commit to my
pull request and everything gets updated and can get squashed. The preview
and review process is then much faster.

So of course patches get ignored. Because there’s a lot of process overhead
that’s unnecessary. Then of course people lose patience, because the
overhead is a waste of time.