On Ian Jackson and dpkg

[Klee Dienes <klee@mit.edu>]

Ian seems to be getting a lot of criticism lately regarding his direct
and sometimes blunt manner of discussing technical issues.

For the record, I have worked with Ian a fair bit lately, both as the
current dpkg maintainer and in several other contexts.  We have
disagreed often, particularly reagarding the appropriate nature of
per-file checksums and other package verification issues.  Yet I have
always found him to be pleasant and easy to work with regarding any
and all technical issues, at least via personal E-mail.

If you have a change you'd like to see made to dpkg, why not submit
that change to me as a cleanly written patch-file to dpkg?  I have yet
to reject a patch submitted to me, and Ian has yet to override any of
my decisions to incorporate modifications to dpkg.  There are hundreds
of things that we have 100% consensus on how to fix --- why not submit
a patch file for one of those?

It seems to me a bit disingenuous to complain about Ian "impeding the
progress of dpkg" given that in fact he's written the majority of the
code, and given that there is currently a dpkg maintainer who is (with
the blessing of Ian) quite willing to accept patches and modifications
from other people.