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Re: Intent to hijack Bacula



* Jos? Luis Tall?n (jltallon@adv-solutions.net) wrote:
> Steve Langasek wrote:
> > Actually, we've heard in this thread that Stephen (his AM) *did* offer to
> > sponsor bacula uploads, and José Luis did not avail himself of this.
> When the offer did come, I wasn't able to prepare the upload anyway.
> I suspected that Stephen, given the state of things, would be in excess
> picky with my packaging.

I certainly would have been picky, as any DD *should* be.  It's
unfortunate that you've been able to slide by without someone picking
through your package.

> Moreover, I couldn't trust that he would upload in a timely manner...

Uh-huh, this argument really only flies if you'd actually *tried* it and
been unsuccessful.  Saying "I couldn't upload fixes because someone
offered but I'm not sure if he'd actually have time so I didn't bother
to ask" doesn't really cut it.  I *had* asked you for packages which
fixed the issues I found and those never appeared either.

> It does happen to be the same time when I am finally home (just returned
> from Sweden, where I have been for almost 21 months) and had the
> opportunity to work effectively on my packages again.
> Unfortunate coincidence, I must admit.

Rather unfortunate, especially when you were telling me in February that
you were going to have fixed packages soon after a harddrive failure or
some such, iirc...

> However, regular practice for this is to offer help or co-maintainership
> (which others did before) and not hijacking the package.

No, regular practice is to hijack it.  It's just that in general the
'maintainer' is MIA entirely instead of only-in-practice.

> Even when I explicitly denied being willing to give up the package, John
> has attempted (and almost succeeded already) hijacking my package. This
> is what I don't accept.

Erm, he's already 'succeeded'..  There really isn't any question about
it, he's just cleaning up more of the mess before uploading the new
version.  Feel free to take a look at darcs...

> I have in the past always accepted patches and included them as soon as
> I could.
> How is it different this time?

You don't seem to understand that some of what your package was doing
was unacceptable and seemed uninclined to accept patches for it.  Not to
mention that you havn't done an upload in ages and seem to feel unstable
is a place for dumping broken garbage..

> Why shouldn't I be able to fix my packages in a reasonable period of
> time (say, before the end of May) now that I am back home? Assuming I
> failed, this "super-duper developer", John Goerzen, has proved to be
> able to "fix everything" to your liking in a very short amount of time,
> and so would be able to have Bacula in Etch in no time.

Unfortunately, it's just plain too late, and your attitude regarding it
doesn't work.  Take a break from it for a couple of days, let John
upload the packages when he's done with them and then review & critque
them, if you're still interested in working on bacula packaging.  I'm
very sure John would be happy to look at patches or suggestions you
might have.

> If grave personal issues are not a valid excuse for not devoting Debian
> as much time as I would have liked to in the past months, then most of
> the people in this thread shall step out of it and shut up.

Past year, and the 'grave personal issue' excuse has been played a
number of times..  It may be that it's time for you to accept that you
don't really have time to commit to a package such as bacula and that
John does.

> If that is indeed the case, state it clearly so that all people
> approaching Debian will be warned beforehand.

I'm pretty sure people who are approaching Debian to be maintainers
realize that letting packages with RC bugs for over a year sit around
with nothing done on them isn't appropriate.

> I will also consider whether I am interested in contributing any work to
> Debian in that case, too... as will probably most other people.

I doubt many people have the misconception that they can ignore their
Debian packages for over a year with outstanding RC bugs against them.

> However, I am amazed about how much attention Bacula has attracted as of
> lately... when I first packaged it and began maintaining it almost three
> years ago, nobody cared a bit about it. Now that the worst is over and
> Bacula is becoming famous, all sorts of people want to have their names
> attached to it... I can't hardly be surprised by this.

No, the only thing attracting attention here is your steadfast
insistance on trying to continue to be the maintainer of bacula when
it's pretty clear that you've done a poor job to date and John can clean
it up and get something our users can use into unstable quickly.

> Note, however, that I have accepted co-maintainership (as long as it is
> done on fair terms to me) and have even created an Alioth project for this.

It's pretty clear that any changes you'd like to make to the packaging
need to be reviewed before being applied.

	Enjoy,

		Stephen

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