[sldev] The recent uptick in open source patch activity, and where it's going

[Bryan O'Sullivan]

Hi, all -

As Soft mentioned, we're making a big effort within Linden Lab to review 
and apply patches from open source contributors.  As recently as a month 
ago, our backlog of patches stretched to almost six months.  We've since 
brought that down to, in most instances, about a month.  We're closing 
in pretty quickly on a backlog near zero, which is great.

My hope is that in the future, we ought to be able to triage and review 
patches within hours to days, not weeks to months.  This can't be a 
promise, because there are always fires to fight and distractions to 
fend off, but we'd really like to be able to turn your submissions 
around quickly and effectively.

If you've looked through source tarballs, you'll have seen the 
doc/contributions.txt file that lists all of the patches we've either 
applied or taken inspiration from.  We are conscientious about crediting 
even one-liners.

However, that file is pretty invisible, and doesn't to my mind do nearly 
a good enough job of acknowledging the efforts of people outside of LL 
who are working on the viewer.  We're working to find a more visible and 
regular way to give credit to people for their work; watch this space.

     <b