Re: Intent to hijack Bacula (Heads up, Get The Facts!) (long)
On Fri, May 12, 2006 at 03:13:31AM +0200, José Luis Tallón wrote:
Jose,
Before I comment on a few things, I want to make something clear to you.
You have repeatedly accused me of having something personal against you,
both in public and in private.
I cannot recall ever having even *heard* of your existance prior to
looking at Bacula, and didn't know a thing about you until later yet.
I would do this regardless of who the maintainer was. I seem to recall
possibly doing it for some Perl HTML package that was in a similar
situation to Bacula in the late 90s, but I can't really remember. I'm
sure you could dig up links.
What's more, I WOULD HOPE PEOPLE WOULD DO IT FOR ME. I have maintained
my fair share of packages over the years, and I have also orphaned or
given up packages for adoption over the years. I've been NMU'd, even
recently.
I am not mad at that. In fact, I am glad that these things have
happened. (I wish it hadn't been necessary, but I'm glad that people
have stepped up to do it when it was.)
A key difference is that I recognized when someone else would be better
able to take care of a package, and amicably arranged with them to do
so.
I am proud and happy to see things that I once maintained go farther
than I could have taken them. It's neat to see updates to rdiff-backup,
lincity, or even mgetty come across. I was very pleased to see recently
that the descendent of the "pure64" amd64 archive I created (which was
itself a descendent of the one Goswin created) has been accepted into
Debian. That's not thanks to me; I put in a week or two to bootstrap it
but many others have done far more than I ever did, both before and
after. I am not even a footnote in the amd64 project, nor do I deserve
to be. I am just glad to have been able to have a part in it -- it
really was a FUN project.
I don't say this to try to prove that I'm some mighty Debian developer.
I'm not, and I know it. I say this because I want you to understand
something that you may not have had a chance to experience yet -- that
is, that there is more to getting satisfaction from a project than doing
everything yourself.
The best compliment for a Debian developer is not, in my opinion, "Wow,
you maintain a lot of packages!" (Though Joey Hess certainly is a
wonderful developer.)
I think the best compliment for a Debian developer is for a *user* of
Debian to say, "Wow, *Debian* is a solid OS that Just Works."
NMUs make Debian better. Hijacking of packages, as in
this case, can make Debian better too. Remember, from the Social
Contract, that Debian's priorities are its users and Free Software.
Now then, there is not much new in your message, but I'd like to address
a few points.
> > * Bacula's current maintainer is not a Debian Developer and has been
> > in NM since 2003.
> >
> So what? If only the "elite" can contribute to Debian say so. Then, all
I already told you in private, when I informed you that this thread
existed (since you didn't seem to have noticed it, I thought the polite
thing was to make you aware), that it was an error on my part to make it
look like this was part of the case for removing your package. Someone
-- I forget who just now -- had rightly pointed that out to me.
So you know that I do not hold the attitude that you claim I do. I
would also point out that I contributed to Debian prior to becoming a
Debian Developer.
> There is still half a year left until Etch is released.
Attitudes like this will ensure that there is always half a year left
until Etch is released.
> Still much more than two months left for the base freeze. A transition
> takes 10 days at most.
If you get the package right to start with, and uploaded on time. Which
history indicates is not likely.
> > * The last upload for Bacula was almost a year ago.
> >
> There were no upstream releases for over six months, either.
But there were RC bugs against it in Debian for over a year. You needed
to make a new upload.
> > * The maintainer has repeatedly, over the last year, said he's working
> > on this but hasn't made much real progress, and has made no upload to
> > Debian.
> >
> And I have. Prove otherwise if you can. I have my testing standards, and
http://packages.qa.debian.org/bacula
The last activity from you was:
[2005-07-14] Accepted 1.36.3-2 in unstable (low) (Jose Luis Tallon)
Followed by:
[2006-02-14] bacula REMOVED from testing (Britney)
> never upload anything without testing.
Then your testing standards are insufficient for an upload to sid. You
have uploaded packages that would not even *install from scratch* on
most machines.
> > * The current maintainer does respond to pings, but has a long record
> > of problems getting bugs (even RC bugs) fixed in a timely fashion.
> >
> I assume you meant "not fixed"...
No, the problem is that you haven't fixed them in a timely fashion.
> > I have already prepared an NMU that fixes 22 bugs, including all four RC
> > bugs. I have tagged those bugs as pending. This release is currently
> > sitting in NEW. I also prepared subsequent NMUs that fix critical, but
> > unreported, bugs in the Debian Bacula packages.
> >
> The fact that you uploaded six versions of Bacula to NEW within one day
> gives an idea of the level of testing you give them.
That is not correct. Here are the dates of the "NEW" acknowledgments
from the ftp-master scripts for my uploads.
Date: Wed, 03 May 2006 14:02:23 -0700
Date: Mon, 08 May 2006 14:02:15 -0700
Date: Tue, 09 May 2006 07:17:11 -0700
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 11:17:05 -0700
Date: Wed, 10 May 2006 20:47:09 -0700
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 15:17:12 -0700
BTW, you *KNEW* that your "six versions of bacula within one day" was
inaccurate because the Debian Installer scripts CC'd you on every one of
those messages whose dates I have just listed.
> This means that John Goerzen uploads packages without testing them.
> Either that or he enjoys 48h-days and has ultra-fast machines (I have an
> AMD3GHz/1GB RAM/SCSI discs for development).
It only takes a few minutes to do a full build, and far less to do
a partial build after making minor tweaks, and my machines aren't as
powerful as that. But I did test my packages.
> Instead of uploading many half-baked packages, you could try getting one
> right before uploading.
The problem wasn't that my packages were half-baked. The problem is
that there is a *LOT* to fix. As I fixed the most important things, I
noticed more things that needed to be fixed, and fixed them in
subsequent uploads. Each upload represented a gain in quality over the
prior state of the packages.
> It is hardly justifiable to build and upload that many packages if you
> already foresee many more fixes needing to go in.
It is less justifiable to withhold fixes for an RC bug because I know
the package is not perfect.
> My users don't seem to agree with you (w.r.t. to "working" Bacula
> packages)... I have *many* successful reports from my users, by the way.
> Wanna check?
No. If they have been lucky enough to avoid all your bugginess, fine.
I am glad that they have, and hope that their data really is as safe as
they think it is.
Users of Debian are not so fortunate, as your packages as they were in
sid would not build, install, or remove correctly and stood a quite
decent chance of taking down production services.
And it is the users of Debian that are at issue here.
It was trivial to see that the RC bugs against Bacula were valid. You
even admitted as such to some of them.
> > anyway, and I might as well upload them to Debian.
> >
> > I also e-mailed Jose about the situation, offering to adopt Bacula, on
> > April 27, but have not yet received a reply to that message.
> >
> Well.. I was away, on vacation and without connectivity, for some days.
> Am I required to always check my mail daily??
You accused me of not trying to contact you, and I have pointed out that
this is false.
> I answered as soon as I was back. Note that, not being a DD, I can't set
> the "vacation flag" on db.debian.org.
> Please point where it is said that I must have a "vacation
> autoresponder" otherwise.
The URL I sent you, referring to the Developer's Reference, documents
the procedure, at least part of which you could have done (mailing
-private). Due to your claimed nearly 2 years of being away from home
and thus unable to maintain your package, you should have orphaned it 20
months ago.
> John Goerzen>"he has written very poor code -- some of which has been broken for several years "
>
> If the oldest bug is less than a year old, how could that be? Troll.
The oldest RC bug is more than a year old, and you know it.
> You don't seem to be like working in a team. Do you? I have proved otherwise.
No, I don't want your code running on my machine unless I've looked at
it first.
> You have yet to prove that your *sudden* interest in becoming Bacula's
I'm sure I can never prove that to your satisfaction, but it's not
relevant anyway. I've told you it's not true, and it doesn't make any
sense anyway. But it's not even relevant.
I can't really think of a downside to people fixing bugs in Debian
because they are asked to do so at work. In fact, when I used to work
for a Debian company, I *DID* do that. There are plenty of people in
Debian today that do that.
> - In his own blog[2] he admits being a complete "Bacula newbie".
I suspect that means something a bit different to me than to you.
I read the entire 600-page manual and had, at that time, installed
Bacula from source (due to the .debs being so broken) and played with it
for an hour or two. I have, by this time, a pretty decent understanding
of how Bacula works and builds. I'll be better in a couple of weeks.
> ... yet he pretends to know the software and its users better than me
> and so be able to redo the packaging in a better way in no time.
Nope, I just know that I can maintain it better in Debian.
> He never answered this question either: JG> BTW, if you feel so proud
> of being an "official" Debian Developer, why don't you use your
> @debian.org account, not even for your packages? I surely would.
Because it's not relevant. I don't need to advertise that, and I'd
rather just use the same account I always used.
> This was a long mail, and took some time to compose. If I forgot any
> facts... well, I'll try to add those later. I'd better devote some
> time to packaging instead -- I'm really tired of all this already.
Then please, let it rest, and contribute to the Alioth project next week
when it's ready.
BTW, the packages now in sid have fixed several dozen bugs already, and
they now use dbconfig-common (that *really difficult* transition that
you thought it would be took a couple of hours, and I hadn't ever used
dbconfig-common before.)
To sum all of this up....
Debian is a "can-do" project that needs people with a "can-do" attitude.
I tried to be nice to you, but I will not tolerate you trying to lecture
us about how doing almost nothing, making continued inconsistent excuses
about it, and then acting indignant when someone fixes your mess is
somehow the right behavior for the maintainer of a Debian package.
It is not.
-- John
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