Re: Updated status of GNOME in potato
Chris Waters <xtifr@dsp.net> writes:
> Debian stands for quality, not speed.
Unfortunately, of late the Debian gnome packages have been neither
good nor timely.
For instance---and not to pick on anyone in any way, I don't even know
who this involves, this is just what happened to occur to me as an
illustration---more than a month ago, the maintainer of gdm uploaded a
new version that simply didn't work, and then promptly disappeared.
Bug reports went unanswered, etc. I had to go back to xdm.
Many of the core packages hadn't been touched in *months*, even though
everyone else in the universe was benefitting from the bug fixes,
stability improvements and updated features that were present in newer
versions...and there were lots. Up until I started updating
gnome-libs last week and working with the other packages people had
covertly updated, I'd basically written off GNOME because it was
unstable as all get out.
So don't suggest the prior situation represented "quality", 'cause it
didn't.
> No, "we" wouldn't! I'm sorry, but one of the big advantages I find in
> working with free software is that "we" take the time to do it right,
> rather than working in a mad panic to meet arbitary deadlines. I get
> enough of this "we need to release the moment that <foo> happens" crap
> at work!
Finally, I'm *not* proposing some dumbass rush to do a shit job just
to say we did it. However, I am hoping that maintainers of these
packages will give them careful but *prompt* attention, since Debian's
spent the last several months letting this *highly user-visible* stuff
languish.
I think achieving parity in a timely fashion for this significant
milestone in GNOME development would be a nice gesture towards some of
those pesky users we have to satisfy.
If course, if you don't care about the users---if you feel that this
whole discussion is all about meeting some arbitrary deadline at the
expense of quality, do whatever you want on whatever schedule you
want. It is your right to spend your time how you wish.
However, in that instance, you can expect me to do some NMUs of your
packages because, *I* have decided, for this particular segment of the
distribution, that I feel some responsibility to our users to make
this happen in a timely fashion.
Mike.
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