Hello, On Tue 15 Dec 2020 at 11:14AM GMT, Mark Hindley wrote: > Sean and Simon, > > On Mon, Dec 14, 2020 at 01:17:30PM -0700, Sean Whitton wrote: >> > In the cases where the regression was accidental, ideally, the answer >> > would be someone calmly and politely offering a tested patch, but it >> > sadly seems equally likely to result in hostility, and I think it's >> > reasonable for a maintainer to try to avoid that preemptively by making >> > it clear that the LSB init script is someone else's responsibility. >> > Our volunteers are not automata, and I think maintainers need to be able >> > to set boundaries for their responsibilities to protect their mental state. >> > >> > Similarly, in the case where the dependency is deliberate, I don't >> > think we want the responsibilities of a Debian maintainer to include >> > interceding between angry sysvinit users and upstream. >> >> Okay, great, I now see a clearer argument in favour of dropping the init >> script: enabling the maintainer to preemptively avoid dealing with bugs >> which are likely to generate hostility, rather than just the idea that >> there could be bugs which would generate a lot of technical work for the >> maintainer in which the maintainer does not see much value. > > I am afraid I don't agree with this. > > Hostility is never justified or justifiable and none of us should ever have to be > subject to it or tolerate it. However, using the avoidance of putative poor > behaviour by others in the future as a justification for a current or past action > seems a weak argument to me. IMO, the best way to promote the ideals of > tolerance, courtesy, humility and openness is by espousing them in one's actions > and by doing the right thing. It would not be good to assume that there are never circumstances in which preemptively avoiding hostility by refusing to engage with certain technical options is a reasonable thing for a maintainer to do, but whether it is something the project can accept in this particular case is still in question. -- Sean Whitton
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature