Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?
On 9/16/22 9:40 AM, Tobias Frost wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:47:19AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > On 9/16/22 12:12 AM, Nilesh Patra wrote:
> > > On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 06:17:02PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > > > To put it in the most brief terms, I come to that conclusion based on what
> > > > many people are telling me: Debian maintainers cannot fix bugs in software
> > > > because they are just volunteers.
> > >
> > > That statement is incorrect. People _can_ and _do_ fix a lot of bugs when
> > > they have time. There are a lot of DDs/DMs/contributors fixing a lot of bugs on a daily basis
> > > for that matter. You could consider taking a look at -devel-changes ML if you'd like to.
> > >
> > > > That explains why I almost always am at
> > > > least annoyed by one or two bugs when running Debian software, and sometimes
> > > > after an update the computer is totally unusable until I can debug it and find
> > > > the fix, because volunteers don't have the time to do it for me. That is what
> > > > most everyone on debian-user is telling me. Do you disagree with what they
> > > > say?
> > >
> > > Well, sometimes bugs do sit around for a bit, yes; but you are presenting it in
> > > a much way that it makes the situation look worse than it actually is.
> > > The resolution is quick quite a few times (to my
> > > experience and I am a DD myself) but yes, sometimes they do sit around for a while.
> >
> > That's easy to explain why your bugs are fixed quickly. You are a DD, so your
> > bugs are important. I am not a DD so my bugs are not as important to the
> > maintainers who have a greater responsibility to respond to a DD's bug than
> > to an unknown user's bug. That is the way it should be. No problem here, and
> > please no one reply and say I am complaining. I am not. I am just seeing
> > how things work at Debian and I think they work fairly well.
>
> Please stop with your passive-aggressive rhethoric.
> Claiming that we don't care about equally our users is … inappropiate and greatly insulting
> to the contributors (regardless of their status in the project).
>
> You need to stop that. Right now.
>
>
> > >
> > > In that case, it is nice to file good bug reports (as Andy told you) and if you have a
> > > patch, that's even better. You could consider to ping maintainers after a week or so if
> > > you think it is important.
> >
> > Thanks for the advice. I think a week is way to short. They probably would
> > think I am a nag and a troll if I did that. I usually wait six months and they
> > still ignore the bug sometimes.
> >
> > > And if you think something very critical is broken, you could
> > > even raise the severity of the bug, I don't see a lot of problem with it.
> > >
> > > And yes, sometimes the maintainers of a package _can_ be AFK too,
> >
> > For six months?
>
> Even if it six years, a maintainer has absolutly the right to ignore any report,
> be it mine, the DPLs, from someone else or yours. Remeber, unless you pay them,
> they do not owe you anything.
Let me see if I understand. I read in the Debian documents that Debian
has no BDFL, no central authority. Yet every package maintainer can become
a BDFL? If that's true, then that Debian is a collection of thousands of
BDFLs, given that there are thousands of packages to be maintained.
Like medieval Europe, a bunch of little warlords fighting off bad guys.
The only problem, sometimes those little warlords, in their mistaken
zeal, kill off some good guys.
But I do not think the analogy of a bunch of little warlords fighting off bad
guys accurately describes Debian, but that is what Debian could become
if that type of thinking holds.
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