...Flywheels! Spin them up with PV cells or at a recharge station.
An added bonus with this technology is that, as flywheels can discharge really quickly, you can carry out high-energy physics experiments on your way to work or even attach a railgun to the roof. Then you'll have a good way to relieve pressure when stuck behind a careful driver and be saving the environment.
I'm a fairly experienced developer and even I find it difficult to solve problems in free software that others are actively controlling. I have to read up on the coding standard, possibly go through large amounts of code to see what needs to be changed (and how to change it to avoid unforeseen problems) and then hope that my patch gets added.
It seems much more sensible to suggest changes to current developers and let them fix it their way. I know this probably goes against the spirit of FOSS, but I just don't feel comfortable spending time trying to solve a problem that may be not be seen (or understood) as one by the people maintaining the software.
I remember the trouble people had convincing the GTK+ developers that there was a bug in the menu code that resulted in the entire menu disappearing if you clicked on a sub-menu within the "keep-up triangle". I don't think they ever got it - at least not in the bug report discussions I contributed to. The bug magically vanished recently, but I am expecting its reintroduction at some point down the line. I did consider trying to fix it myself, but developer's comments led me to believe that I would just be wasting my time.
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But then you'd have the Australian team pressing "RUN STOP" and "RESTORE" whenever they miss out on a gold medal.
...Flywheels! Spin them up with PV cells or at a recharge station.
An added bonus with this technology is that, as flywheels can discharge really quickly, you can carry out high-energy physics experiments on your way to work or even attach a railgun to the roof. Then you'll have a good way to relieve pressure when stuck behind a careful driver and be saving the environment.
I'm a fairly experienced developer and even I find it difficult to solve problems in free software that others are actively controlling. I have to read up on the coding standard, possibly go through large amounts of code to see what needs to be changed (and how to change it to avoid unforeseen problems) and then hope that my patch gets added.
It seems much more sensible to suggest changes to current developers and let them fix it their way. I know this probably goes against the spirit of FOSS, but I just don't feel comfortable spending time trying to solve a problem that may be not be seen (or understood) as one by the people maintaining the software.
I remember the trouble people had convincing the GTK+ developers that there was a bug in the menu code that resulted in the entire menu disappearing if you clicked on a sub-menu within the "keep-up triangle". I don't think they ever got it - at least not in the bug report discussions I contributed to. The bug magically vanished recently, but I am expecting its reintroduction at some point down the line. I did consider trying to fix it myself, but developer's comments led me to believe that I would just be wasting my time.
So, you want to fix free software by trying to get people to stop freely distributing said free software?
Sensational!