Re: Upload Quality Was: Re: OpenOffice
[Please stop CCing me! I'm on the list.]
From: "Craig Sanders" <cas@taz.net.au>
> On Fri, Aug 10, 2001 at 04:35:09AM +0100, David Starner wrote:
> > When you've got a program that's almost done, I can write a helpful
> > bug report without much trouble. "I tried typing in an 80-character
> > word, and it ran off screen instead of wrapping." If it's a work in
> > process, I can't. "It crashed on startup." "Where did it crash on
> > startup?" Well, I'm not in a mood to download a large source ball,
> > spend hours compiling, and hope it still crashes in the same place so
> > I can catch it with GDB. If someone is in that mood, they're probably
> > willing to download it from upstream and compile it.
>
> mozilla was in that state until recently.
>
> so was most of gnome.
>
> and most of kde.
Actually, no. They may have had bugs, but the core functionality was
somewhat usable.
> should they have been excluded from debian until they're perfect? if so,
> then we can reduce the size of debian by about 99% just by deleting all
> the imperfect programs.
I'm not talking about perfection; I'm talking about working at a usable
level.
> the fact that these programs were easily available in packaged format
> to non-developers was one of the reasons that they improved so rapidly.
> more users, more eyes, more bug reports, and even a few more patches.
Many crap programs never get another version. If it has huge gapeing holes
in functionality and known bugs in what is there, bug reports can't help.
"So, you know it only handles 8-bit pnm format files, and can only rotate
clockwise 37.5 degrees - but if I find any bugs trying that, you want to
know." I don't know about you, but when I download a program that doesn't
even come close to working, I throw it away - I don't bother trying to patch
it.
I'm told that OpenOffice actually works, to a degree. Then I'm not talking
about OpenOffice.
> the only criteria for inclusion in debian is, and always has been:
>
> 1. can we legally distribute it?
> 2. can someone be bothered putting in the effort to package it?
And developers have always had the right to say "Why the heck are you
packaging that? This works so much better and is actually maintained." If I
understand it right, that's part of what ITP's are for.
> if you don't like or want a program, then feel free to ignore it. you
> don't have to install it just because it has been packaged.
It still takes up space on the mirrors, and probably on the CD's. It takes
up room in dselect's list, making it that much harder to install Debian (I,
for one, feel the need to go through the entire list, to make sure I have
what I need.).
And also . . . there's the effect that, if you're looking for a program that
does foo, and you try masterfoo, and it's a piece of junk, and you try
foozilla, and it's trash, and you try foobar, and it crashes on startup,
you're likely to give up, believing that free software has no tool that can
do foo. If that happens several times, you might get real frustrated on the
whole free software thing. I've seen a Debian developer complain that free
software was all beta, due to this effect. It's definetly not fun, searching
through the crap to find usable tools in some categories.
--
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
"The pig -- belongs -- to _all_ mankind!" - Invader Zim
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