Re: upstreams maintainer conflict, was: wget: remove outdated manual page
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On Sat, 16 May 1998, Anand Kumria wrote:
>On Fri, 15 May 1998, Zed Pobre wrote:
>
>> (apparantly much to his chagrin), he is asking for something that isn't
>> unreasonable: that you not include information with the package that is
>> in any way shape or form outdated. If this means that you have to link
>
>Actually I believe he is being completely unreasonable by asking for
>something written from scratch. He is certainly entitled to press for the
>correct authorship information though.
Actually, what's being requested is that that the manpage not be
based upon a manpage known to be outdated and inaccurate. I suspect
that if a manpage was written or converted based upon the current info
documents, there wouldn't be a problem.
>What if ...
>
>"RMS complained that the improvement you made to gcc, although useful, he
>didn't like. And further he wanted you to write the improved files from
>scratch and then improve them - since it will be your own work and not
>his"
I think the analogy is more along the lines of...
"RMS complained that the improvement you made to gcc, although useful,
was based upon patches he wrote a while back that were known to have
security holes in them (he's a lawyer, not a programmer). He doesn't
want to be responsible for trying to insure that every problem is
fixed in the code as is, so he wants you to write the improvement from
scratch using clean code, otherwise put heavy warning signs on any
version you release stating that releases based upon these patches are
against his will and not his responsibility.
>I'd be terribly disappointed in any author claiming to know/understand the
>GNU GPL since this action undermines it.
I hope not. This is more of a matter of quality control. If that
undermines the GPL, then I consider that a failure of the GPL in this
case.
>> pointer to the info system. What do we lose?
>
>In this specific instance, nothing. But if every author of a GNU GPL'd
>program pulls the same stunt?
Then we deal with it on a case-by-case basis.
>> make your decision if I filed a bug against wget now complaining about
>> that very fact?
>
>That sounds like you are using the bug system for terriorism...
I resent this.
1) I haven't filed a bug (yet).
2) The maintainer has presented the excuse that since removing the
manpage leads to a bug in the package, it shouldn't be done.
My statement was pointing out that the fact that the manpage is
out of date is a bug in any case, so the package has at least
one bug whether or not the manpage is removed, and that
shouldn't be a consideration. He can deal with a bug about a
removed or inadequate manpage, or he can deal with a bug about
an outdated manpage, but either way it's a bug, and it needs to
be fixed, preferably by providing an accurate, up-to-date
manpage based upon the current info documentation.
>"CREDITS:
> Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic@srce.hr> wrote the inital draft of this man page.
Mr. Niksic has already expressed a desire that if a man page based
upon this outdated work is left in the package, that it be explicitly
stated that it was against his wishes. I think that of all the
solutions presented, the retention of this manpage is the least
desirable.
I think you're getting caught up in the politics of this rather
than the technical aspects. Debian, for better or for worse, has
fairly consistently chosen technical quality over politics. Whether
or not it is a good thing to allow upstream maintainers to make
demands of Debian developers, the fact remains that the manpage needs
to be fixed. Adding a disclaimer won't fix it; it will only minimally
appease the upstream maintainer. I think this is best solved if the
manpage simply _gets fixed_. If Mr. Lichtmaier has other
responsibilities that preclude him from being able to take care of
this, I'll even volunteer to pick up the package, and try to figure
out docbook and sgml and texinfo this summer. As it is, I've spent
more time writing email about this than it would take to build a
minimalist manpage.
=============================================================================
Zed Pobre <zed@va.debian.org> | PGP key on servers, fingerprint on finger
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