Re: Senseless Bickering and Overpoliticization

[Milan Zamazal <mz@pdm.pvt.net>]

>>>>> "JG" == John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> writes:

    JG> It seems to me that our organization is breaking down.

I can remember one such a situation arising already about *almost three
years ago* (BP about accepting new maintainers; eh, really such a topic,
can't believe!).

    JG> It's been a long time since our last release, which was already
    JG> outdated when it came out.  

I can't remember when it wasn't.  It annoyed me firstly *in times of
0.93R5*, when I heard long awaited 0.93R6 still hasn't been ELF based.

    JG> Where is all our effort going?  Flamewars and power struggles.

Many free software projects suffer from it.  When I started watching
free software development and also when I met Debian, I was very annoyed
with it and didn't understand it.  I still don't understand it, but I
take it as a necessary fact and mostly ignore it now.  Maybe some Debian
geek of social sciences could elaborate?

    JG> And most importantly, how can we get people away from wasting
    JG> their time insulting others on mailing lists and instead work on
    JG> the distribution?

We can't, they simply like it.

>>>>> "JG" == Jason Gunthorpe <jgg@ualberta.ca> writes:

    JG> Obviosly two people care. I would like to take a moment to point
    JG> out to two formal resignations we've had this month. Both
    JG> specificly cited the flamewars, glacial speed and increasing
    JG> bureaucracy. I didn't see much in the way of concern over their
    JG> departures, but it upset me.

I can remember someone mentioning about *two years ago* something like
that "true Debian developer leaves Debian at least twice a year". :-)

    JG> I have no count of how many people have ceased reading lists
    JG> like -policy, -devel and -private simply because they are sick
    JG> of reading the flames and watching the bile fly. Believe me
    JG> though, it's happening.

Thanks to the excellent Debian Weekly newsletter I simply score out most
threads longer than few dozens of messages without risk of losing any
important information.

    JG> Each day I get to talk to alot of people inside and outside the
    JG> project, and one of the biggest complaints I hear is: "It's not
    JG> fun anymore".

As I tried to point out, this is nothing new.

So don't worry, why should you take the bad from Debian instead of fun?

Milan Zamazal
(recalling with sentiment and tears in his eyes old good times when
Debian was dying firstly, taking out a handkerchief and going to do some
Emacs hacking now to move things a little forward again)