Features wishlist for xfce 4.1

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, Xan wrote:

> So the question is "how developers decide if a feature has to be included in 
> the code? and how it's decided to decline this feature?". I'm afraid that 
> developers decide it _subjectively_. I mean that if someone propose a feature 
> A, if some developer _think_ that A is useful, then he/she implements it and 
> we have a new feature. But why not doing this by objective way as possible as 
> it can be.

of _course_ it's subjective.  that's the whole point.  these projects 
exist because of people wanting to code things because they think they 
are fun and useful.  if *i* don't think it's useful, *i* am not going to 
code it.  if someone else wants to, and the maintainer feels that 
including the patch doesn't pose a problem (whether in performance or 
code maintenance - whatever), then that's fine.  but if you want a 
feature in a codebase, one of the most important steps is *getting it 
written*.  if no one wants to take the initiative in coding it, it's not 
going to happen.  you can't expect a developer of an OSS project to 
write something they don't care about or aren't interested in.

you may disagree with this viewpoint, but that's just how it is.

on a side note, i think the whole petition idea is a little silly.  on 
one hand, if a developer says, "i think this is an interesting feature, 
but it's not something i want to add because i don't think there's much 
call for it.  if you can prove me wrong here, i'll add it," then i can 
see the utility of such a petition.  but if someone is expecting to use 
an unsolicited petition as leverage - "you HAVE to add this feature 
because X number of people want it!" - then i totally disagree with the 
use of a petition.  perhaps i'm petty and spiteful, but i would 
probably go out of my way to deny a feature if a petition for it were 
being used in such an underhanded manner.

	-brian