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Re: Advice with uncooperative maintainers



On Wed, Aug 11, 2004 at 10:20:45AM -0400, Daniel Burrows wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 11, 2004 at 02:58:56PM +0200, Robert Millan <rmh@debian.org> was heard to say:
> > I avoided referring to the bug number, or explaining what the bug is about,
> > because I don't want the thread to decay into a discussion on wether my
> > requested changes are ok or not.
> > 
> > The question is, that if they're not, I'd expect the maintainer to reply
> > stating so, instead of pretending to be MIA.  And even if he didn't reply,
> > he hasn't justified why reverting the changes yet.
> 
>   I don't think you can expect prompt responses to every wishlist bug --
> especially if the changes are basically OK but the maintainer doesn't
> want to upload them right now (because, for instance, they have no
> bearing on sarge and the autobuilders have backed-up queues a mile long
> of packages waiting to enter sarge).

I disagree.  I feel that bug submitters should be able to expect a
prompt response to every bug, even if it's just "I got this, and I'll
deal with it when I have time" or "This is a low priority right now" or
"Please wait until post-sarge".

As we've discussed numerous times on this list lately, communication
seems to be the only way to avoid misunderstandings, and the ten seconds
it takes to reply to a bug is not too much to ask. 

And just in case you think I'm talking out of my ass, this is exactly
what I do with my pile of packages, as well as tracking upstream bugs
for my end-users (failure to do so being another one of my pet peeves
that I won't get into here).

>   Obviously these bugs are important to you, but not everyone else will
> place them at the same priority level.

Which isn't really the point - because there was no way in this case to
tell the difference between the bug being low-priority and the
maintainer being MIA. (Note that I am not saying the maintainer *was*
MIA, I'm saying that I would have no way to know from looking at the bug
report.)

KEN

-- 
Kenneth J. Pronovici <pronovic@debian.org>

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