The forked elephant in the room

[Atila Neves]

On Monday, 15 January 2024 at 18:33:07 UTC, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 15, 2024 at 10:11:33AM +0000, IGotD- via 
> Digitalmars-d wrote: [...]
>> [...]
>
> This is true, we have been repeating over the last decade or so 
> the pattern of attracting enthusiastic contributors due to the 
> technical excellence of D, only to have them turn around and 
> leave after coming to an impasse with the project's management. 
>  As I have said previously, the problem isn't so much that 
> things did not go their way; I think any reasonable person 
> would understand that in technical decisions there's always 
> pros and cons and one could go either way, and that whichever 
> way a decision goes, it would work out, one could live with it.
>
> [...]

Thanks for the write-up. I think it's true that these perceptions 
exist, and would like to ask you what you think we can do about 
it.

If I can summarise my own opinions about contributions, it's that 
they're absolutely welcome, but that every change has trade-offs 
and each diff has to justify itself with positive ROI. Of course 
it's going to be frustrating to work for free and not have it pay 
off (it's happened to me multiple times), but it also can't be 
the case that the default is to merge PRs unless "there's a 
reason not to".

My own perception is that we keep saying this, but maybe not? 
Perhaps we need to update the contributor guide.