On Sat, 30 May 2015 21:20:56 +1000 Nick Coghlan <ncoghlan@gmail.com> wrote:
Given the extensive complaints about the lack of corporate contribution to upstream CPython maintenance, the hostile reaction to a concrete proposal for such ongoing contributions has been both incredibly surprising *and* disappointing
IMHO, they were not more hostile than against individuals' contributions of the same kind. Any patch proposal is bound to controversy, that's a normal aspect of the process, and one that contributors should usually be willing to go through. Also, when there are in rules in place, most people want to see them upholded, because that tends to promote fairness much more than when exceptions are granted all over the place. So people's reactions have really been understandable, if debatable. (FTR, Intel contacted me in private about such contributions and I said the backport of the computed gotos sounded ok to me -- since it has turned out entirely harmless on the 3.x branches --; that doesn't mean I like how this public discussion has turned out)
The offer came with one string attached: that the Python 2.7 branch be opened up for performance improvements in addition to bug fixes. Since maintainability was the main concern with not backporting performance improvements in the first place, this seemed like a straight up win to me (and presumably to other folks aware of the offer), so it never even occurred to us that folks might not accept "because this proposal is backed by a credible offer of ongoing contributions to CPython maintenance and support" as a complete answer to the question of "Why accept this proposal to backport performance enhancements, and not previous proposals?".
You're making contribution some kind of contractual engagement. That's not an obvious improvement, because it has some large impacts on the power structure (for one, volunteers can't reasonably compete with contractual engagements). Regards Antoine.