The agility and responsiveness of major open-source endeavors never ceases to amaze me.
Earlier today I realized that the, otherwise excellent, Greek localization of MediaWiki lacked a localized table of Magic Words; elements one can add to wiki pages to get specific behavior. This omission could confuse the users of a Greek wiki I maintain. It was very easy to find the file that had to be modified, and in less than an hour I had completed the translation of the corresponding PHP hash array. I tested the change on my setup, and it worked fine. Figuring that I would not want to have to reapply the fix in the next MediaWiki update, I set out to submit a patch to the MediaWiki developers. I read that the appropriate procedure was to file a bug report. I entered the patch into the MediaWiki Bugzilla fearing however that my patch would disappear into oblivion. However, less than four hours after I downloaded MediaWiki's repository for editing the patch had made it into the Subversion repository!
Here is a complete timetable of the events:
Time | Event |
---|---|
14:49 | I download the MediaWiki source code through Subversion |
16:07 | I finish editing the messages file |
16:43 | I complete testing my changes |
17:01 | I create a patch |
17:20 | I have created an account on Bugzilla and submitted the patch |
18:27 | Raimond Spekking applies the patch to the Subversion repository |
This entry's title, Cooperative Development at the Speed of Light is of course an exaggeration. However, I've calculated that if we communicated by shouting, the trip
I have friends working at large IT companies who have to wait months to get a commit window to apply their fixes to code they maintain. No matter what problems one thinks that open-source processes have, agility is not one of them.
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