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Re: [gnu.misc.discuss,gnu.emacs.gnus] Free software: Packagers vs Developers



Branden Robinson <branden@ecn.purdue.edu> writes:

> On Fri, Jul 02, 1999 at 02:14:33PM +0200, Per Abrahamsen wrote:
> > A good guess would be that the users of the proprietary Unixen are
> > more conservative, and therefore stick with Emacs.
> 
> Obviously Mr. Abrahamsen is capable of something other than a worst-case
> interpretation of something he is unhappy with when it is his shoulders,
> not someone's else's, that some responsibility may fall upon.
> 
> Is it really worth dealing with the djb's of the world?

No it is not, but I find it quite offensive to compare Per to
djb. Although I have never met djb I think it's safe to say that he is
"in a class of his own". I do not agree with all the points Per is
raising here and I think that some over-generalisation is going on, but
still this is far from djb-style flames.

> I mean, everybody KNOWS I accepted maintainership of XFree86 for Debian to
> simply screw people over (be they the upstream authors or our users).

calm down, man!

> If the upstream maintainers of XEmacs would really rather not any stupid,
> malicious middlemen stand between them and their user base, maybe we should
> indulge them.

I do appreciate sarcasm, but this (pseudo) threat is just stupid.

Just for the record: Per does NOT speak for the XEmacs team (neither
do Hrvoje or I for that matter) and as far as I know he does not even
use XEmacs! 

Concerning the relationship between the XEmacs developers and the
packager for Debian -- it's non-existent as far as I know. I have
never seen a single post on any of the XEmacs development mailing list
or a bug report from said maintainer. So either the packaging is so
brilliant that users of XEmacs on Debian never have problems or the
touted Debian process of filtering bug reports from users and
forwarding helpful info "upstream" didn't work in this case.

I think there was even a case where one of the XEmacs developers has
dug a helpful patch from a user out of the Debian BTS, this was AFAIK
not prompted by any hints from the Debian people.

I am not really complaining about all this [1], we do have lots of bug
reports directly from our users, but you should realise that the
process of actually maintaining a Debian package involves far more
than the initial packaging -- I am sure this is discussed in the Policy
Manual, but I suspect that many Debian developers underestimate the
amount of time and effort it takes to _maintain_ their package after
uploading it and therefore the quality of the Distribution (and Free
Software in general) suffers. This is maybe not as bad as having the
packager and the author flaming each other but still a problem.


> Hmm.  And I always thought RMS was supposed to be the bad guy in the
> GNU/Lucid split.  Maybe I need to revisit that interpretation.

please, let's not start _that_ discussion again!


  Gunnar

Footnotes: 
[1]  and as far as I know neither Per or Hrvoje did -- they talked
     about their personal experience with their projects, NOT XEmacs

> -- 
> G. Branden Robinson              |   You can have my PGP passphrase when you
> Debian GNU/Linux                 |   pry it from my cold, dead brain.
> branden@ecn.purdue.edu           |   -- Adam Thornton
> cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu/~branden/ |

-- 
Gunnar Evermann
XEmacs BTS maintainer
(satisfied) Debian user
ge204@cam.ac.uk


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