Re: depends

[Rico -mc- Gloeckner <debian-ml@ukeer.de>]

FWIW...

On Wed, Mar 16, 2005 at 02:07:24AM +0100, Adam Borowski wrote:
> > [Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 13:48:15 -0500] [ftpmaster: James Troup]
> > ------------------- Reason -------------------
> > ROM; broken, no upstream.
> > ----------------------------------------------
> 
> Strange reason...  The upstream is alive and kicking.  The package was 

January 2002 the package was broken and upstream micq (that was before
Ruediger joined the micq project) was not working.  Ruediger fixed them.


> dropped from the archive with a loud BOOM after the upstream planted a 
> timebomb because of being mightily upset about the Debian stable policy, 

I might be wrong, but iirc he was more upset with the maintainer at that
time and upset with the unstable-version of the debian package.  It
wouldnt make sense to plant code in unstable when trying to fix the
stable-issues anyway.

I dont want to start another argument, anyway... Someone may tell me
what the sense of a package in stable in a non-working state, when a
fixed version is available from upstream.  Imagine X11 is not working
due to (f.e.) some incompability in a newer kernel and debian refuses
to update the x11 package in stable, effectively rendering debian stable
useless to quite some users (using stable AND x11 AND compiling their
kernel themselves).


> IIRC the story was:
> 1. Mirabilis made a change to their servers that severely broken micq 
>    (causing it to spam the user with a lot of error messages, making
>    the user interface effectively useless).

Which is the way icq is. *sigh*


> 2. Due to the stable policy, an update to the package in stable was 
>    denied.

2b. Ruedigers opinion of the Debian Maintainer was extremely low and the
communication was <censored> - from both sides.


> 3. Mr. Kuhlmann kept being swamped with tons of bugs reports from users
>    months after he fixed the package upstream.

Which sucks bigtime.  Debian (maintainers) should *help* upstream, not
make their work bigger.  Resulting Frustration is understandable.


> 4. He planted a timebomb in a new version, making the program stop working
>    after a certain date, telling the user to update the package.

(from micq.org - where the packages still are available and working.)



feel free to f'up whereever appropriate.
-- 
http://www.ukeer.de/about.html

"How many software engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None: "We'll document it in the manual."