Re: upstreams maintainer conflict, was: wget: remove outdated manual page

[Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr>]

[ I hope debian-devel allows non-subscriber messages ]

Joost Kooij <kooij@mpn.cp.philips.com> writes:

> I forward this message to debian-devel because it really shouldn't be
> discussed on debian-user.

Thanks for the forward.  For the sake of developers, I will reiterate
the issue.

For the 1.5 release of Wget, I decided to drop the old manpage from
the distribution.  To reiterate, the reasons were:

* The page was old and totally out of synch with Wget.  It is enough
  work to update one form of documentation (`wget.texi'), let alone
  keep the two of them synched up;

* In spite of the very clear out-of-date warning at the beginning of
  the page, I received (and still do receive) queries related to the
  features documented in the Info manual.  When I explain that the
  features are documented in the manual, the usual answer is "oh, but
  I didn't find it in the man-page";

* Removing it is the right thing to do.  No documentation is probably
  better than outdated documentation.  Given the fact that Wget *is*
  documented in the Info manual, the choice was clear;

* The only reason why wget.1 ever existed in the first place was that
  I didn't know Texinfo at the time of writing it.

A friend warned me that Debian package of Wget 1.5.0 simply
distributed the old 1.4.5 man page.  The new package listed J. Ramos
Goncalves as the package maintainer.  After I complained to
debian-users, Mr. Goncalves kindly explained that he was not
responsible for the release, which was done by Nicolas Lichtmaier.

Mr. Lichtmaier, seeing the complains, simply went ahead and "updated"
the man-page (in fact only adding the docs for new switches), but he
left the out-of-date warning!  As this man-page was clearly not what I
want to see in Wget, I asked Mr. Lichtmaier to either remove the
man-page from the package (linking it to undocumented(7), as per
Debian policy manual), or to create a simple man page based on `wget
--help' output.  I got no response.

Then I wrote this:

> I see that you completely ignored my previous suggestions.  Very well.
> 
> I require that you make it damn well obvious that I am in *no way*
> associated with your "updated" man-page and that it is distributed
> with Debian against my explicit wishes.
> 
> Nicolas, thanks to you, this is probably the first time in two years
> of Wget's existence and related correspondence that I have actually
> regretted making Wget free software.  Congratulations.

As I still haven't received any further response from Mr. Lichtmaier,
I stand by these words, unpleasant as they are.

-- 
Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> | Student at FER Zagreb, Croatia
--------------------------------+--------------------------------
"A Real Programmer's code can awe with its fiendish brilliance, even
as its crockishness appalls."


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