Re: md5sum passwords
Daniel Quinlan writes ("Re: md5sum passwords"):
> Bill Mitchell <mitchell@mdd.comm.mot.com> writes:
> > This might be a bit harsh WRT the distribution itself. Too much
> > open input can lead to a lot of haggling over diverse viewpoints on
> > this or that alternative (not that we haven't had a bit of that
> > anyhow).
>
> Open input is good, in general. If you want to guarantee haggling, do
> it on a mailing list. If you don't want haggling, have input sent to
> a responsible party.
>
> Most Debian contributors seem to think every issue concerns everyone,
> everyone debates on everything, everything goes very slowly. If you
> want to speed things up, I suggest these initial steps:
I don't think we have a problem wrt slow response to bug reports
because of the comments people make about them.
On the other hand, I think there have been a number of times where the
only reason we made the best decision about how to fix a particular
problem was that another not-obviously-related developer saw the
report and perhaps the reply and was able to give good input.
It also allows any developer to pick off non-bugs, so that the busy
maintainer with half the distribution on their plate doesn't have to
deal with it.
I think the problems we've had with slowness have been due to lack of
manpower in some cases, and in many cases a lack of willingness to
part with things until they're perfect. One of Linux's selling points
is that the latest hottest thing - buggy as hell or not - is always
available if you want it. I think this really improves people's
motivation to help contribute.
Bill Mitchell writes ("bug reports (was: Re: md5sum passwords)"):
> On Wed, 15 Nov 1995, Daniel Quinlan wrote:
> > Open input is good, in general. If you want to guarantee haggling, do
> > it on a mailing list. If you don't want haggling, have input sent to
> > a responsible party.
>
> Good point. I agree. General distribution of bug reports is a useful
> option, but shouldn't be the default.
At one point I agreed with you, but I've come to disagree.
I don't think the general distribution of bug reports has been
unhelpful.
One thing we could do is to set up a seperate list that gets copies of
all bug reports, and have the developers decide individually whether
to see all of the reports rather than having the submitter decide
whether to distribute it generally.
Speaking as the dpkg maintainer I find that many bug reports touch on
my area in some way, and I reply to a significant number of them. I
wouldn't want to lose the ability to do that.
> Mirroring bug reports to debian devel was done because it was
> convenient, I think. Bug reports weren't, and still are not, sent
> to package maintainers because that is inconvenient to implement.
It's not so inconvenient now as it was, and it could be done.
Ian.
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