Re: On maintainers not responding to bugs
Pierre Habouzit <madcoder@debian.org> writes:
> On Tue, Mar 06, 2007 at 12:49:56PM -0500, Matthias Julius wrote:
>> Pierre Habouzit <madcoder@debian.org> writes:
>>
>> Do you expect potential helpers to search various list archives or
>> mail maintainers to ask whether they need help? I would guess only
>
> no I expect them to contact the teams, and entry points are obvious.
> Hiding behind the fact that entry points are not waved under their nose
> and that because of that they can't help is, well, Ubuesque.
It's a matter of how someone arrives at the point where he wants to
help. If he wakes up one morning and thinks "I want to help the KDE
team" he will probably contact the KDE maintainers. If he thinks
"Since 3 years I am using Debian it's time for me to contribute." he
might look in more generic places to find out who requests help.
>>
>> What does it hurt to file a RFH bug? At least it is a centralized
>> platform where potential helpers can find out about who need help.
>> And it is a logical place for that. And the list is posted weekly on
>> -devel.
>
> because that's not one, but 1500, and that would not be very useful to
> flood RFH that are often specific needs for technicals matters. Here
> it's manpower missing, RFH seems inapropriate to me.
Does a RFH need to be that specific? I think those 0-day NMU mails
from last week might be well suited for RFH. I think it is beneficial
if the help request is permanently visible compared to being burried
in some list archive.
If you wanted to request help for a specific bug you would tag it
'help'. Am I correct?
>
>> > Again, I do not appreciate the latent criticism of the big teams to
>> > hide their understaff problem. It's blatantly bogus hence iritating,
>> > almost insulting.
>>
>> Don't you wonder why it is perceived like that?
>
> Yes I do, especially given that in that thread those teams have
> claimed many times they need help, and that people continue to pretend
> like it never happened. So Yes I wonder if it's not that it's just
> easier to pretend it's our fault, than to question onself "wtf didn't I
> helped before already ?"
Well, of course, it is always easier to blame everybody else. I just
think an argument like "We have a RFH out since one year and nobody
cared." will work better for you than "We sent a request to -kde a year
ago and nobody responded."
Reply to: