Re: Complaint

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Sun, Dec 14, 2003 at 01:20:15PM +0100, Ingo Juergensmann wrote:
> This is an official complaint about the current buildd situation.
> 
> The situation:
> 
> - Wouter Verhelst wrote on Tue, December 9, 2003 18:40 to debian-admin@l.d.o
> and the m68k porters list at m68k-build@nocrew.org to get information about
> the process of getting wanna-build access back. 
> 
> - James Troup wrote then (as a reply I think) on Thu, December 11, 2003
> 19:34 a mail to m68k-build list to get a status about the m68k buildd
> machines (new ssh key, kernel info, etc.). He then got answers he asked for. 
> 
> - As http://buildd.debian.org/stats/graph-week-big.png shows, there are some
> archs already have a working wanna-build access since days, namely mips,
> mipsel and powerpc. 
> 
> 
> I really feel discriminated by this situation. 
> It seems as if the archs that are managed by Ryan Murray are preferred in
> their restoring process whereas others doesn´t even get a status update when
> they don´t ask for information and even then, nothing really happens for
> days. 
> 
> I get the impression that there is some sort of a "Debian clan" that
> controls some important positions of the Debian project and that is
> protecting itself from being influence by the outside. This is my personal
> and subjective impression, although I know of other people who are sharing
> that impressions (in whole or in part). 
> I do hope that this is wrong.
> But I think that a better and more open way of communication between some
> Debian admins and users in a polite way would help. 
> 
> It´s simply impolite and embarrassing when you contact a person, who´s
> administrating some service, and you get *NO* reaction from that person. 

It is not impolite, it is rude. And also a hinderance to the proper
continued work of debian.

> Sure, people can be overloaded with work, being too busy to answer
> immediatedly, but when this extends to a longer time or is the default

Hell, when they have time to discuss the issue with third parties, then
they also assuredly have time to send an explanatory mail to the
concerned maintainer.

> behaviour they should consider to share his workload with other persons that
> would like to help. But when they refuses that help, something is seriously
> wrong and should be solved. 
> 
> This is not intended to be a flame or personal insult to anyone, but to be a
> complaint, because I´m really unsatisfied with the current (non-)information
> politic and the current buildd situation.  

Well, me to, i have a compliant.

I uploaded a new powerpc kernel package, with many new binary packages,
which allowed to boot on chrp, chrp-rs6k and prep, not only on pmac
hardware, and it has been sitting in limbo for 5  or 6 weeks now. Notice
that i am the powerpc kernel maintainer, but don't own a pmac, but only
a machine of chrp lineage. I have gotten no response to why my package
was still hold up in the NEW queue (for at least 2-3 weeks prior to the
intrusion, so the intrusion is no excuse), altough i know elmo commented
to joeyh about my package split negatively. I thus wrote a explanatory
mail to ftp-master, but got no response, also later other members of the
d-i powerpc team wrote to ftp-masters, but got no response, and i
personnally wrote to aj, in response to a letter concerning the release
schedule, and informed him that unless the ftp-master unblock the
powerpc kernel package, there is no way the powerpc arch can be ready
for release, but got no reply, and later, when i meet aj on irc, he
denied having had any knowledge of these mails i sent to him, which
makes me believe that ftp-masters forward all the incoming mail to
/dev/null or something such.

And then, when the local root exploit was discovered, i was expected to
let everything fall, and to have a fix and upload a powerpc kernel for
stable, without much advance warning, which i did. I fear that the above
will be the same. Months lost in passive boycott of the ftp-masters, and
then it will be expected of me that i forgot everything, and pass all my
time fixing what needs fixing a few days before the release or something
such.

And worse, because of this lousy behavior of the ftp-masters, i am not
able to fix the local root exploit in the sid kernel, since they will
anyway not be accepted in the archive if i upload them. So this
inadmissible behavior is not only causing delay, but is also the cause
of a security menace in debian.

Friendly,

Sven Luther