Are all patches created equal?

Posted Jul 21, 2011 11:15 UTC (Thu) by sitaram (guest, #5959)
Parent article: Are all patches created equal?

"Bug fixes have value": yes, but only if they're someone else's bugs or bugs in long standing code. You can't submit buggy code today, send in 10 fixes tomorrow, and have a score of 10.

If I were to do this, I'd introduce a lag. Count those commits/changesets that are in the released kernel for more than 3 months and have not suffered any subsequent fixups.

Delayed gratification is not very popular though.

Are all patches created equal?

Posted Jul 21, 2011 16:46 UTC (Thu) by hpro (subscriber, #74751) [Link] (2 responses)

This reminds me of something Scott Adams wrote in one of the Dilbert books. A software company introduced a bounty system where QA people would get a small bonus for finding a bug, and coders would get another small bonus for fixing the bug.

What no one thought of was that it was the same people introducing the bugs as were fixing them.

Needless to say, a black market in bugs immediately formed.

Are all patches created equal?

Posted Jul 28, 2011 14:56 UTC (Thu) by joeytsai (guest, #3480) [Link] (1 responses)

I think this is the related comic, I've always remembered it:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-14/

What a long way we've come!

Are all patches created equal?

Posted Jul 29, 2011 20:28 UTC (Fri) by knobunc (guest, #4678) [Link]

The one from the previous day was the one that stuck with me:
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/

"I'm gonna write me a new minivan this afternoon!"