a plea to new contributors

[Graham Percival]

We are, yet again, about 10-20 hours of work away from having 0
critical issues.  This is a familiar position; we've been like
this since mid-August.  There's a tiny chance of releasing 2.14 in
January, and only a small chance of having it in Feb.  As we
slowly fix Critical issues, people discover more.  

I see no reason why this will change in the near future.  I was
hopeful that over the Christmas vacation, we'd manage to get
ahead, but that hasn't happened.  We simply have an imbalance
between the energy/interest of developers and the amount of
Critical issues.  I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with
our energy/interests!  Reviewing patches and the like is very
important (I'd actually say it's more important than fixing
Critical issues), and more than anything else, this is a volunteer
project.  Nobody is obligated to do anything.  But that doesn't
change the epirical fact that there has been an imbalance between
our energy/interest and critical issues for the past six months.

That's where the new contributors come in.  By assumption (the
"new" part), you're not part of the balance for the past 6 months.
So any effort you put towards fixing Critical issues will help fix
them sooner, which in turn will make 2.14 happen sooner.

Don't be discouraged from working on them just because other
people aren't.  Issue 1290 involves a change to a 20-line
function.  You'll probably need to read more of the file to
understand how that function works, but still, it's not terribly
complicated.  The next step in issue 1464 is just to create a
backtrace.  There's instructions in the CG for that.  I don't know
what issue 1465 needs right now, but if you start dumping
printf()s around, you should find a few clues.

The release is never going to happen if nobody works on it.  New
contributors, please consider working on it.  All it takes is time
and energy.

Cheers,
- Graham