On Sat, Apr 27, 2002 at 02:19:32PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 27, 2002 at 03:03:35PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> > Uh, the whole point of ignoring enquiries is that it wastes far less of
> > the ignorer's time than responding to them. It'd be nice if this were
> > otherwise, but it isn't. Take a look at this thread: Joey Hess gives
> > the reason why he wouldn't accept it, and is then followed up by:
> Yeah, you see how much time that wastes. If the ftpmasters (or
> somebody else) just responded saying apt-i18n is a bad idea when that
> was asked,
...we would've been flamed mercilessly for being tyrannical dictators
overly obsessed with our own importance, as English bigots who obviously
want the Empire back. Or, more or less, exactly the same thread as we
have here.
Of course, if I'd not bothered saying anything at all, the thread would
also have died out much more quickly. But sometimes I get this foolish
idea that it might actually be worth trying to give people some clue
into what's going on. Usually I live to regret it.
> > It's very easy to say "We should be more transparent! Yay for being
> > upfront and honest!", but, quite frankly it's *way* too time consuming
> > in practice.
> I don't think an organization with so many volunteers and without
> transparency works.
That's nice, dear.
Would you like to demonstrate an organisation with so many volunteers
and without transparency that doesn't work? Clearly Debian doesn't fit.
> > To take another example, back in potato's freeze when I
> > was culling the release critical bug list, I started off taking a fair
> > degree of care to include an explanation and to Cc the submitter so
> > they knew what was going on. About half the time it resulted in angry
> > messages from said submitter insisting that I was being stupid or lazy
> > or didn't care about good quality packages or whatever. After a couple
> > of exchanges of messages, it's usually possible to convince them that
> > you do know what you're talking about, but it just takes up way too much
> > time. These days, I just don't bother to Cc anyone.
> I think this is something different. Now we are talking about
> developer who has put hours of work into the package, not just about
> somebody who filed a bug.
Surely you're not being dismissive of the users whom we list as our highest
priority, right next to the entire free software community?
> > And quite frankly, the only reason this package was ever uploaded in
> > the first place is because the submitter and everyone else who cares
> > couldn't manage to reach a consensus with Jason about what to do --
> > that doesn't bode well for a productive discussion after a REJECT message.
> I don't see why you can't have a productive discussion.
_Then look at this thread_. Not. A. Single. Person. Has. Tried. Improving.
The. Patch.
Don't know where to start? The obvious place would be to look back at:
> Basically, Jason said my patch was quite nice, but that the libapt
> messages need to be in a seperate domain.
>
> I answered that I didn't quite see why this should be necessary and
> offered an alternative solution. Which works. I have not heard of Jason
> since then (19th of January).
(http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/debian-devel-200201/msg01747.html)
...and to actually implement the "separate domain" instead of making
up excuses. There're probably a bunch of other things that need to be
changed too, but the only way you're going to find out about them is if
you don't insist on being forcibly convinced of every single one of them.
> Saying nothing
> doesn't give you a productive discussion anyhow. And stopping the
> whole discussion at all isn't possible either, it will only happen
> later. If we would have the discussion 3 monts ago, we might have had
> i18n in apt at the moment. And now we don't have anything, because
> everybody just ignored the whole issue.
No, we don't have anything because people are _still_ more interested
in arguing than writing useful patches.
Anyway, I'm done. In closing, you'll note the consistent unpleasantness
of the response to my attempt to introduce a small amount of transparency
into the reasoning behind some packages getting left in incoming. Don't
worry. It won't happen again.
Cheers,
aj
--
Anthony Towns <aj@humbug.org.au> <http://azure.humbug.org.au/~aj/>
I don't speak for anyone save myself. GPG signed mail preferred.
``BAM! Science triumphs again!''
-- http://www.angryflower.com/vegeta.gif
Attachment:
pgpqpZ72MoVpm.pgp
Description: PGP signature