Bug#973333: lintian.d.o: please add a symlink/redirect to the most recent version
Hi Pierre-Elliott,
On Fri, Nov 6, 2020 at 2:59 PM Pierre-Elliott Bécue <peb@debian.org> wrote:
>
> The infrastructure is just a
> machine and I don't see how it could perform poorly except if it lacks
> physical resources.
That is a misperception. I cannot comment in detail due to allegiance
and gratitude to all the people (and especially past maintainers) who
devoted time and resources to Lintian over 22 years. Please let me
just say that Lintian's pieces no longer worked well together.
The software was the issue. The solution required an upgrade in
hardware infrastructure, which DSA would not discuss without a working
prototype.
As far as I am concerned, I am merely implementing ideas other
maintainers would have tried with more time. The idea of a PostgreSQL
database, for example (which possibly prompted your reaction to this
bug) was not new and predated my arrival. [1]
Like everyone else, I simply have Lintian for a little while and hope
to leave it, one day, in better shape than when it found me. One
cannot spend so much time with a single piece of software without
being profoundly in love with its mission and total belief in the
value it provides for fellow maintainers.
That being said, Lintian users hail from all parts of the Debian
universe. As you probably appreciate from your work on the community
team, not all interactions are positive. I usually do not work on
Lintian for a few days afterwards. I am sorry to count our
correspondence today among those experiences.
[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=776658#40
> I'll be blunt, but you should really review the way you interact with
> people if you see manipulation or aggression in a question raised along
> with concerns. As I see it, your reaction is as much inappropriate as
> you claim my message is.
Obviously, we both perceive the other as passive-aggressive. The
burden of proof, however, rests with you. You wrote to me without
solicitation. Without going in circles, it's best to agree to disagree
here.
> When someone comes and say "It feels to me that you could have the
> intent to move the *production* lintian site out of Debian's machines.",
> which is voluntarily written as hypotheticall, it means that one wonders
> if it is your intention, and, indeed, to avoid accusation, it is turned
> as an hypothesis.
You explained to me what you thought my intentions were. I did the same for you.
> Feeling attacked by someone asking if you intend to do something and if
> so, that they think it could be a bad idea is something that prompts me
> to tell you, as you do downwards, /please get some rest/.
As a strictly religious person, I will, Thanks!
> And it's easy to say why and how someone could see "moving part of an
> infra outside Debian" as a bug. I'm fine with asking it here, but if you
> feel like there'd be a better place, please do tell and I'll be glad to
> forward our discussion there.
No thanks. I think there is too much discussion at Debian already.
> You seem (to me) reluctant to engage with criticism in that very case: I
> came with a simple question and you actually jumped at me, telling that
> I was forcing you to do something and intimidating you. That is not fine
> at all.
My perception is a product of the interaction between both of us. It
is presumptive and biased to blame my side entirely for the effects of
your communication.
> Furthermore, I did not tell that any of your contributions to Lintian
> were bad, but I do tell that if you were willing to have, on the long
> run, the *production* lintian website hosted outside of the Debian
> infrastructure, then I think it would be a bad decision.
I agree with you and hope that insight will motivate DSA to engage in
a positive and constructive way.
> Feel free to ignore me then, but I'm pretty convinced this discussion is
> useful, as I'm clearly trying to understand your thoughts and vision for
> lintian (the tool and the website), which are not written anywhere I
> could find (maybe I did missearch).
I am definitely not ignoring you.
> Yes I did. Assuming one's intentions is not being coercitive, and having
> that person implying that I am trying to coerce them is their own
> interpretation, and scary, because nothing in my message could imply
> that I want to force you doing anything.
I just searched the text in this bug to make sure: I did not allege
that you coerced anyone. You wrote that. I said you are "projecting",
which also happened here. You again claimed I did something that, in
reality, you did. As you saw in the rest of our correspondence, it
makes arguments circular.
The rhetorical question about an offer I could not refuse was a movie quote.
> It's your interpretation, and it is completely wrong. And "lintian is
> linked to core elements and should stay in Debian's infrastructure" is a
> technical point.
You just picked this up out of the blue? Or are other people
complaining behind you?
> This bug is about the website, which is not DSA-maintained as far as I
> understand, is it? I fear that we mix two things: the website and the
> machine. DSA is responsible only for the machine.
This bug is about neither. It's about how to provide Lintian output
online for a particular source (and the installation packages that
were built from it). That information is readily available in our new
Postgres database but not in the static web pages (and also not in
UDD).
As for your comment about the DSA machine, I hope it was answered above.
> "an experiment for the time being", which tends to imply that it's not
> supposed to stay an experiment, and that's why I raised my question.
Of course, it is not supposed to remain an experiment. It is supposed
to replace the static web pages!
> I was and still am not aggressive.
You wrote to me because you thought I was causing problems. How could
that fundamental aspect of our exchange escape you?
> It's possible that you misunderstood my point or that I failed to make
> it clear. I know that everything is free software. But a working
> infrastructure doesn't come up in five minutes.
As I mentioned, the way to generate static pages was inoperable when I
took on the responsibility to restore the web site. Also, I did so at
DSA's urging. They wanted to turn off the service for lack of
maintenance. I think it had been broken for a year.
> An externally hosted machine lacks that feature, and if you were to be
> driven off Lintian maintenance (or Debian as a whole),
Thanks for writing that. For the record, I feel intimidated. I'll
leave it to future observers to decide if my feelings were warranted.
Kind regards,
Felix Lechner
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