This post really annoys me, the author is talking about moving to Subversion from Bazar as the source control of the project, because people didn't want to install Bazar, then he goes off and says this:

Unfortunately, this kind of laziness has become pervasive in the Free Software world, as compared to say 10 years ago. Back then it was all but expected that you’d have to fix the build to get something working. But it was fine, because you would fix it and send a quick patch. Believe it or not, this actually felt pretty awesome. You were helping to keep the train on the tracks, and that meant getting your hands messy.

I had to read it thrice to get it through. This guy is talking about Open Source software, and he seems to think that putting more road blocks in the way of participation in a project is a good thing. WTF?!

I don't know about that, but I know that as a member of several OSS projects, the teams usually try to minimize the amount of work that you need to either use and / or develop in the project. Not only does it make sense, but it means that other people can get started easily.

To do otherwise is to make sure that people would not use the project. This may be some sort of an "acceptance criteria", but it is a stupid one. You are not paying people to do it, you are asking them to give up valuable time in order to figure out your stuff. It is your duty to make it easier, not to complain about them not passing the hurdle that you put there.

Then there is this, in the comments, which is more relevant to the post:

By the way, saying how you “have to learn half a dozen different vcs tools” would mean that you’re working on half a dozen different projects, which is quite unlikely isn’t it?

Right now in my OSS folder there are 18 projects that I keep track of. And there are at least 10 others that I checkout and delete from time to time. They all use subversion. This means that the barrier to entry into a project is finding the project URL, checking out the trunk, and then waiting for it to complete. The barrier for entry in any other system is a lot higher. I need to install a new SCM, lean how to use it, how to generate a patch, diff, etc. This is a non trivial cost, and not something that I am willing to do unless you have a really good reason.

If presses, I would probably use CVS, but I don't really like it. Using anything else requires not only memorizing a new set of commands, but also grokking another SCM model entirely.

If you want to get contributors, you need to tempt, not to hunt.