[OSM-talk] Unclosed Mapnik bugs

[Andrew Harvey]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2011 at 9:34 PM, Josh Doe <josh at joshdoe.com> wrote:
> I think part of the problem is the high barrier to entry for editing
> the Mapnik style.

I've made 1 commit to the main stylesheet and while it was technically
straightforward, the understanding of the community of people who work
on it wasn't. Because it's artistic there is a lot more subjectiveness
to it and I found it hard to know "should I" make this change... am I
helping or just making more disagreement...

The svn revision log mostly shows ldp and stevechilton as the main
editors (recently, at least). I think it isn't really clear if they
are happy for others to push changes directly, or if they feel it is
their style sheet and others should fork it rather than push changes
directly.. I don't mind either way but it would be nice to know the
view of the main contributors.

SVN plays a role here, comparing to development done in a github style
where you fork and make your edits and then inform the maintainer that
if they like your changes they are free to merge them, and if not then
let you continue your fork. This is more welcoming for new comers,
rather than giving them edit access to the live stylesheet without any
instruction on design decisions of the style. Sure I can make a patch
and post it on trac, but git branches and forks seem nicer.

my 2 cents.