So, that's hopefully my last post for quite a long time.
On 26/12/01, David D. W. Downey wrote:
> * Pierfrancesco Caci (ik5pvx@penny.ik5pvx.ampr.org) wrote:
> > 1) learn how to properly format a mail message (i.e. fold at 75th
> > column)
> Quit pickin at the measly stuff and pay attention to the content of
> his words. Laying the bear trap here only gets you laughs from the
> other hunters.
Wrong. If you want people to read a mail and follow the content, then
you have to proper format it, so that's it's easy to read it. Did you
ever read some books or newspapers and noticed the format that they are
using? With your argumentation we can remove all those formatting and
prints books and newspapers on a large paper roll and read it.
> > 2) learn how to package a deb and adopt whichever package you think
> > you're better at maintaining than the original maintainer
> Pointing out a failure in a system doesn't mean one has the ability
> to do what you are asking. It simply means he found a failure. In
Not directly. He found a situation that he think it's flawed and which
needs to be changed. But without either having enough people interested
to take care of it, it won't change until he steps forward and starts
working on changing it.
> this instance, his becoming a maintainer does nothing to solve the
> problem he's point at other than for that single package. Pushing
Wrong, he can then help with other packages, make NMU's if the
maintainer gave him permission or track MIA developers done and then
orphan their package and let Debian QA take care of them.
> someone off into this section only further proves the point that
> debian's starting to potentially fall apart since you completely
> prove that you either failed to hear or desired not to hear what
> his content.
And you seem to ignore that this is _volunteer_ _based_. Debian
Developers will work on those issues that they are interested in and not
the things you want to see them working on. If you want to see
Developers working on some issue, either start paying them for doing the
work, convince enough to work on the issue or start the work on your
own. The BTS will happily accept your mails and debian-qa will be
interested to hear about MIA developers which you tracked down and which
agree to orphan their packages or aren't reachable in any way.
> "Why are you listing all that crap bub?" Probably what a few of you
> are asking. Only to show my experience with different distros,
> linux, and where I feel I gain my credence for my vote for Brian's
> comments.
And then you are not able to use your experience to create solutions to
help debian but to also start lenghty discussions here? Thanks for
showing me that at least a part of our user base seems to have changed
and see Debian as company which they pay for and which they can force
into working on certain issues.
> Debian is a solid distro to me. It's got heart, strength of
> charactor both in it's member software, and it's member users and
> developers. It's withstood 99% of the "Let's add every feature we
> can lay our hands on cause that'll show we know what we're doing!"
> crowd. It's solidly built, loved, and protected over by a loyal
> group of users. This is more than I can say for the majority of the
> distributions out there.
So why are you then not contributing something back to the Debian
project if you quite like it that much?
> Folks, our user base (non official developers and general users
> alike) deserve to be listened to when they say something.
Listening is one thing, but doing something is much better and at least
people like you who according to their own description have enough
experience and knowledge, should think about spending some time on
helping and improving debian by working on it instead of starting
lenghty discussions and complaining loud.
> Why? Simply because of issues with Debian, be it the installer of
> old, the lack of certain support, all different reasons. But one
And you aren't able to work on the installer or even just clearly
describe the people working on it which parts need to be improved in
your opinion and why? Lack of certain support? Try to write exact
descriptions what kind of support you are lacking and then talk with the
maintainers who are responsible for it about adding it or helping them
add it.
> *doesn't* happen to debian. If each maintainer is watching his or
> her upstream, updates with their source when it's released, and if
> the upstream is *not* providing the updates like they should, either
Pardon? You want to give us a exact defintion for "updates like they
should"? There's no way to define that and sometimes upstream authors
also disappear simply because they have a lack of time.
> announce to the BTS that the source is cold, or attempt to
Why should one do that? If the package is still working fine and
contained no bugs, there's in my opinion no need to do this. And if the
package is too buggy, it's easier to contact the ftpmaster via the BTS
and ask for package removal.
> request to the upstream that they be named as the new maintainer if
> the upstream wants to back out.
Which can only happen if the maintainer has enough knowledge about the
source, the programming language that upstream used and time to take
over the upstream maintaince.
> but the amount of cruft building in Debian shows that we must be
Which cruft exactly? Did you report those cruft to the BTS and then
tried to contact the maintainers if they never reacted so far?
> yes, developers whether you want to hear it or not, debian is
> getting many complaints. And there are a lot fo silent ones as well.
Because for lots of people it's easier to complain about some problems
via email, especially on public mailing list like this one, then
spending their time on supporting debian.
> several hosting firms. Some of the training I've had has allowed me
> to work as consultant both freelance and company based. Most of the
> times it's been Red Hat that has been chosen in those companies.
Which happens in my experience quite often because they the companies
have commerical support from a company which they can pay for to solve
their problems. When a company decideds to use debian as distribution,
they either need some people who know debian well enough to fix the
problems on their own, or report bugs and problems and wait for some
maintainer to take care of them without having any influence on them.
> Not heavily to the point of possible extinction, but to the point
> that it's definitely noticable that debian has a problem. We need to
> fix that. Even the general user can help with that. Look at the
And we includes you or even Brian who was the first one to complain.
Problems won't be fixed if you just keep sitting in front of your pc and
only complain. Problems will get fixed if you tackle them.
> upstream of a package that you use a lot of. Hell, make it 20
> packages. Surf and check dates, spend a weekend surfing on them and
> email the owners about the age of the product. Give them 4 or 5 days
4-5 days? You'll should use a longer time frame, because it might occur
that people are currently on vacation, spending time on a fair, having
some private problems, having lots of work or various other reasons, why
they currently aren't able to respond to your mail. So if you want to
annoy even active debian maintainers, you can use the timeframe of 4-5
days, but I would suggest a bigger one.
> (Reason for the cron job is that then you too become a responsibly
Spamming the BTS?
Christian
P.S. I'm now going to lean back myself in my chair again and watch this
lengthy discussion go on and see if this time some nice solution will
show up at the end or if again it will be just lots of mails.
P.P.S.: Feel free to post any comments, suggestion or flames because of
this or my other mail. I'll maybe read them, but I'm not going to post
anything else to this list, so don't expect an answer. (Even if you mail
me private, I'm not ensuring anyone to get an answer.)
--
Debian Developer (http://www.debian.org)
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