Imagine this scenario. You’re waiting at a checkout at your supermarket. It’s a pretty long line, compared to your past experiences.

Directly in front of you there’s a 22-year-old guy with medium-length hair, listening to God-knows-what on his earphones, dressed in casual gear. Probably middle class.

In front of him there’s another guy, about mid thirties, wearing a “business suit”; black pants, white top and tie. Probably upper class.

Then in front of him there’s a woman, probably around the same age as the man, but dressed like a hippie. She’s got a shirt that says “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1″. You fondly remember giggling quietly to yourself the first time you saw this shirt.

Then of course there’s the cashier. Unusually, it’s a guy with a ponytail who looks like the kind who you’d see attending computer and anime conventions.

The lady at the front of the queue puts her goods on the belt and the cashier processes them. Status quo. Then when the lady hands over the money, the cashier’s drawer breaks and falls out. Money goes everywhere. Coins roll in every which direction.

Now what the fuck do you do? Do you sit back and let the cashier run about collecting up his coins or do you help out?

Well, in this analogy, you sit back and let the cashier do it all. All of you in the queue do. Nobody helps the poor cashier.

You useless, pathetic bastards.

Now imagine this scenario wasn’t a checkout line. Imagine the people in the checkout line are actually people in an open source project’s community. Imagine, for a moment, that you’re waiting for The Next Big Release for this open source project. Imagine instead of the cashier’s drawer dropping out and throwing coins like shrapnel from a frag grenade, it’s actually tickets for this open source project. Do you know of a project like this?

I do.

It’s called Ruby on Rails. And it’s suffering because of your ignorance. It is at the moment in a place which I will steal the term “Development Hell” for and use. At current writing it has over 900 open tickets. Let me state that again because it is such a pertinent fact: There are over 900 tickets still open. So what the fuck are you going to do about it?

One little piece

It’s great that (at least in this Western world) we have things called weekends. We also have time where we are not working. Some of us have (a lot) more of it than others and generally waste it playing video games or watching TV. I’m fine with that, but there is a limit I feel before it turns from “relaxing” into “slacking off”. You have to realise that you are part of a world-wide community. You are using something developed by people world wide and it is time that you gave back.

I am sure that many of you reading this will think “I don’t know enough about Rails to do anything with any of the tickets.”

Bullshit. Fucking bullshit.

Take this ticket for instance. Guy experiences hassles with rake doc:rails on Ruby 1.9.2 and edge Rails. How do you go about fixing something like that? Well, here’s that god-damned clue you’ve been missing:

• Attempt to duplicate it. People make mistakes, because they are people. Can you see what they did wrong? Is the bug still occurring in the latest (at this point in time, 2.3.5 & 3.0.0, yes, test both!)
• If something is broken, attempt to fix it. This continues onto my third point:
• Fix it! This is the most simplest, basic, elementary thing. You know the saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it?” the reverse applies. Fix the ever-loving shit of it.
• Can’t fix it? Find somebody who can. They exist. There’s a great probability that the problem is not as unsolvable as certain other problems in this world.
• Can’t find somebody? You’re not looking hard enough. Ask in the IRC channels on irc.freenode.net. Ask in #carlhuda. Ask in #rubyonrails. Ask in #rails-contrib. Ask your friends. Post on the core mailing list. Six-degrees of separation means that you have the power to find somebody with the power to fix this issue.
• Is this ticket no longer valid? Assign it to somebody who can close it. I’m now one of these people. Assign it to me and I’ll look over it.

Another thing to look at is how long the ticket has been a problem for and if it still applies to the latest version of Rails. Take for example this ticket which has been a problem since the 9th of January last year, when Rails 2.2 was the latest version. It’s still a problem in Rails 3, and this means it needs to be fixed. If one guy is suffering, how many other people who have not seen that ticket are? We must go through and judge every ticket before a major release. If I was in charge of a release process, this is how I would run the show. When I release a major version of my project, I want a clean slate, well, at least no bugs. Admittedly there may be some people who miss out on feature requests, but that’s what future releases are for.

Pissing on the fire

I think the Bugmash events are freakin’ awesome. But they only “piss on the fire”. What we need is a concentrated stream (think Amazon River) to quell the beast of 900+ tickets. Donate some of your time to the Rails project. Spend a concerted amount of your spare time this week, and next week, and the week after that, going through the tickets and finding something you can help fix. Every little bit of effort helps.

The Rails core team has only so much effort it can apply in any given timeframe, how about applying some of your own to speed up the process of bringing us closer to a final Rails 3 release?

I ask you, not as a Ruby on Rails core member (clarification: I’m not, nor desire to ever be “core”), but as a fellow Rails guy: let’s keep this Rails beast alive and kicking. Take some time out of watching your porn and actually do something useful. Otherwise, you are just another leech hanging on the side and whining about “it’s been so long between releases”. Did you ever stop to think that: “maybe there’s something holding up the release?” or “maybe there’s something holding up the release that I can help with?”.

Give back to the community that has provided this wonderful framework for your benefit.

Please.

Extra Links

Dan Pickett also has similar advice on contributing back to Rails 3. He makes a good point that if you are able to demonstrate that you have contributed to Rails that it looks awesome on your CV / Resume.

Kristopher Murata writes from the point of view who hasn’t contributed all that much to Rails, but really wants to.

Greetings YCombinator people! Thanks for making this story one of your favourites (peaked at #4). I have commented on your comments left on YCombinator and I appreciate the time you have spent writing them. I look forward to keeping up the correspondence.

Greetings also to the Ruby sub-reddit crew. Thank you for making this your 3rd most popular post and your comments (no matter how critical, all comments are good)

I went in to work today to pick up some things and on the way there the fuel light came on so I thought I would fill up on the way back at one of the two servos on the way. I go in to work, grab the stuff and go to the Foodworks down the road to get money out of the ATM there. It tells me to stick my card in and then take it out immediately after.

I do this. Again. And Again. And Again.

After about the 10th try I get frustrated, grab some snack food and head to the counter with the purpose of getting out my money. I ask the cashier for $200 and she says “Um… I could probably only give you about $20″, which annoys me a little but I know the servo right across the road has an ATM in it that I could try. I walk back to my car so I can drive it across the road to the servo, fill up on fuel and cash. Great idea! So I cross at the traffic lights but the servo is on the other side of that road, and in between me an it is a very long line of cars looking to go the other way.

Scratch that servo.

So I know there’s a Shell just before I get on the Western Freeway that I can go to if I take the scenic route. To me, it’s always seemed like a large well-”endowed” servo with everything you want, including an ATM. I get there and fill up on Petrol and I look inside the shop and see they don’t have the mystical ATM that I so dearly crave. No worries, when I pay for petrol I’ll just ask for the money out then. So I did. Cashier could only give me $50, and I take it.

But I still need a bit more to get me through the week.

Not a problem! There’s an ATM near my local takeaway joints that I know will give me the money I need! I go there and park in the final spot remaining in the parking lot and basically get out of my car and in front of the ATM in one smooth movement. I insert my card.

It feels like something’s stopping the card from going in.

I take it out and try it again.

Only then do I look at the screen to realise that the ATM is switched off.

I drive the remaining 500m home, dejected.

I think this is a sign the world wants me to get out and exercise and it’s showing me this by just about forcing me (indirectly) to walk to the ATM at the Commonwealth Bank on Park Road, just up the road from where I live. So off I go then.