Re: The unofficial buildd effort and its shutdown - my POV
On Sat, Sep 04, 2004 at 11:03:41PM -0700, Thomas Bushnell BSG wrote:
> > True, there's no formal process for people like me, although I proposed some
> > ideas for something like that some time ago, but that was put down as any
> > other idea, most likely by the same people that are now yelling loudly about
> > trust. It was put down for reasons like "That's nonsense! That can't be
> > done. Shut up, moron! If you want, become a DD!"
> So... I'm a little confused. What do you mean "there's no formal
> process for people like me"? The NM process certainly allows for
> things other than package maintenance. What about you is not covered
> by the existing process?
Every time I looked at the NM process it looked to me as a process about
package maintaining. Because this is not what I'm going to do, I turned
away. Quite simple.
> > Yes, and right now it seems as if the unofficials buildds are being not
> > accepted. I don't want to have stress because I'm not trusted as some people
> > thing, so I stopped the buildds (actually they had network problems and were
> > offline at that time and I just didn't start the daemon again ;)
> It sounds like you stopped the buildd's because you chose to, not
> because you were told to. You seemed to me to take a few people's
> discussion as determinative. I have no particular opinion about the
> substance of the matter, but your action seemed premature to me.
It's a matter of being tired of all those discussions directed against you
or your work (i.e. me), that made me to stop them. Why should I invest time
and money when (in the end) this is not appreciated and worthless.
So, decide first if that work is still wanted and tell us then your
decision.
> > Well, in the end they *do* saying a lot as well ;), but when you followed
> > the discussions you'll have noticed that's almost always the same DDs who
> > are saying something "you're an idiot! you're no DD, you have no say!" and
> > such.
> Who said you were an idiot in this discussion? I don't recall
> anything of the kind going on. People thought that a DD shouldn't
> sign binary uploads that he wasn't himself responsible for building,
> that's all. Where were you called an idiot?
Please search the archive. Maybe it's not word by word, but the meaning of
this was like that.
> > Even more unfortunately those people who do their work and appreciate mine
> > are quite quiet. I know many people (DDs as well non-DDs) who agree with my
> > POV, but don't say this in the public. This gives the impression that I'm
> > just a single person with obscure opinions, a troublemaker.
> Where in any of this were you told that being a DD or not made your
> opinions more or less valuable? I don't recall anything of the kind.
Again, please search the archive (the last two years approx.).
Sorry, but a) the impression I got is something you can't prove with MsgIDs,
it's a personal impression that I got in many many discussions, b) I have to
leave soon for a sailing trip, so no time by myself. ;)
> > Anyway, all these bad minded discussions are just another reason why I'm
> > tired and frustrated. Instead of discussing possible solutions, there's too
> > often just a flamewar going on, which make people turn off from Debian - me
> > too.
> What solution would you propose? The best answer to the problem you
> identify is to stop the meta-discussion and instead propose actual
> solutions. What do you think would address the security concerns that
> people had?
What concern? I mean: people said that trust isn't something that you
automatically get when you have a DD status. Either I've proven in the last
4 years that my buildds are trustworthy or not.
Security concerns are sometimes silly... for example the security concern of
James Troup in using a many times published user/pass on the web for
accessing the deb repositry on newraff for the buildds and sharing the
user/pass for another buildd because Mr Troup was too lazy/loaded with work
again to give such a user/pass for weeks! Where's the security concern in
*downloading* things? With a password you can read in many failed build logs
on buildd.d.o? Come on! Get real!
(Note: sharing those login data between buildds was a long time used method
back then, until Troup decided from one day to another that this is
evil[TM]! - without prior notification of course)
> > No. I don't want to become a DD, because I won't package any software
> > anyway, but NM process seems to be very much based on this kind of
> > stuff.
> I don't see anything on the NM page that says you must be a software
> packager to be a maintainer, but perhaps I missed this. Can you
> explain in more detail? Were you told not to be a maintaner because
> you didn't want to package, or what?
Again, it's the impression I got. Maybe the NM pages should be more clear
about that there are other tasks for DDs...
> > No, I can't apply as NM, because I will end up as Goswin did for sure. James
> > doesn't like me, so I never will have to succeed in NM process anyway. This
> > is my impression of how things go in Debian, therefore I'll not even try it.
> I think this really doesn't amount to a hill of beans. I'm happy to
> hear a complaint if you tried and were rejected for illegitimate
> reasons. But to say "I never tried because I knew I would be
> rejected" doesn't carry much weight. We don't even have your
> say-soomas
> to go on, because you might be wrong about whether you'd be rejected.
> What exactly do you want?
I've better things to do than to deal several years in fighting with James
for becoming a DD. And as said by others and me: you don't need to be a DD
to be trusted, right? So, where's the problem with not being a DD? The only
disadvantage I see is that I'm not allowed to elect. That's all for me.
Either you trust me and appreciate my work on buildds or not.
If you do trust me, please tell me so and end the discussion.
If you don't, please tell me so and take on with your discussions.
End of story. :)
> > Not quite. I find it quite annoying and useless to start such a discussion
> > about people (like me) that are doing exactly the same work for years and
> > suddenly this work seems wrong.
> I didn't see anyone tell you to stop doing it. I see someone being
> worried about a similar kind of work; I see people discussing an
> issue. But nobody told you "don't do this"--moreover, nobody could
> have! You could ignore them; nothing stops you from building anything
> you like. At best, Debian could tell a developer to stop signing the
> packages, but I don't think that happened either.
Again, it's about trust and appreciation of work. When you do your work and
get the feeling or impression that other people have nothing better to do
than putting your work into a bad light ("in ein schlechtes Licht ruecken"
in german), you'll simply get that much annoyed that nobody need to tell you
to stop your work.
--
Ciao... //
Ingo \X/
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