Re: [OT] lazy maintainers
On 8 Aug 2001, Jared Johnson wrote:
> On 08 Aug 2001 01:42:10 -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:
> > refusing to maintain a package, and refusing to let anyone else help
> > is one of the more evil evil things a debian developer can do.
>
> Refusing to upload a package is not the same thing as refusing to
> maintain a package. myth is not uploading the package. you can't make
> him.
Yes we can.
*Please* remember that sid is there to be broken. People were disappointed
when Sam Hartman fsck'ed up PAM, but nobody said he was a bad
maintainer. After all, when using sid, it's not abnormal to end up with a
broken system.
If mozilla would be very important for a system to run, then I would
understand this lack of updates.
> in other news, i don't think the non-US deal is entering into it
> anymore. I believe that myth is probably just continuing to hack on the
> package and doesn't want to upload something sub-optimal into debian.
Why not? After all, that's what sid is for!
> Even if you think you can do better, which you can't, it's not your
> package, it's his.
Uh?
That rule is stated in policy, yes, but it's not absolute. If people do a
bad job maintaining their packages, it doesn't count. Sorry.
> As a few have pointed out, none of the things which
> everyone complains about has actually affected a release of Debian yet.
> Despite the convenience of testing/unstable, the main goal of a package
> maintainer is to actually make a good release of Debian happen, not to
> make bleeding-edgers happy.
Sid *is* bleeding edge. Never forget that.
Besides: uploading a suboptimal package has advantages in that you
immediately find bugs in your package. If you don't, you get like 40
bugreports at a time, which is annoying.
Especially if you don't fix 'em immediately, since users tend to yell at
you, then.
<snip>
> "Assume" makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me". Don't assume that because
> there's a slightly long-ish delay now,
"slightly long-ish"?
*Pa-lease*! It's been about over a month! It's got one grave bug, and
three serious! That's not "slightly long-ish", that's extremely long.
If your package is bug-free, you're welcome to wait a month or longer
to update it. If the bug is damn hard to fix, you're welcome to ask
upstream for help and wait for a year or so to fix it. But if there's
errors in *your* wrapper-scripts that load the browser, or if there's
errors in *your* maintainer-scripts that install it, I expect a fixed
version ASAP.
And no, I refuse to accept that it takes over a month to fix errors in
scripts.
*That* is called "lousy maintaining".
Not even mentioning the 8 normal bugs and the wishlist-bugs...
<snip>
> As I mentioned,
> it would appear that the issues which held up post-M18 releases are now
> non-issues. If you want to find out what the issues are, perhaps you
> should diplomatically approach myth in private. If he doesn't answer
> you, perhaps it's because you and a hundred other people are insulting
> him, so perhaps you should go find something more productive to do.
perhaps he should. I'm sorry, I don't even use mozilla (since my system
can't handle it -- a P166), but this is simply bad work.
> > sorry but that is rediculous. NMU mozilla.
>
> This would be decidedly more ridiculous. The current situation is not
> really anywhere near ridiculous. Everything that embeds mozilla is
> still happy with 0.9.1, and people are now able to use all the key
> features in mozilla. Mozilla 0.9.3 is a point release, folks, it'll
> make things go kinda faster or something. If you want it so badly, go
> get the unofficial packages that are widely available. Don't complain
> that the delay is hurting Debian development, because it's not, and
> everyone's ignorant and pointless complaining is probably hurting Debian
> more in that it makes a hard working debian developer (Myth) wish he had
> never thought about maintaining mozilla and it fills up folks' mailboxes
> with clueless, cynical, half-witted attempts at slander.
If he's a hard working DD, which I will not deny, why is it that hard to
upload newer packages that fix grave and serious bugs?
--
wouter dot verhelst at advalvas dot be
"Human knowledge belongs to the world"
-- from the movie "Antitrust"
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