Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?
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.
>
> 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?
> this is volunteer work
> after all. Someone might be on a vacation, or in a conference, or travelling, or busy with RL
> and seeing your BR on an immediate basis isn't a possibility.
>
> > Also, in my experience, these bugs and catastrophic failures caused by updates
> > of a supposedly stable release happened *much* less often when I used software
> > that is written by paid developers.
>
> Fine, but what do you propose to do here? Pay all DDs for fixing bugs? Who will manage the finances/funding?
> What if a bug report is critical and someone is unwilling to pay for a fix? What if someone needs a break for
> whatever reason? -- have you considered to give a thought about these?
You misunderstand me a bit here. If I wanted to propose the idea of
paying Debian volunteers formally, I would have not have done it
on debian-user. The comments so far make realize that is not how
Debian people want to handle the problem of maintainer burn-out,
which seems to be the complaint of some maintainers.
>
> Also, I'd like to say that calling out Debian contributors with "Hey, you are doing a horrible job" is
> a negative thing for us to hear as well. You said that you got a few negative replies, which you are annoyed
> with, this goes both ways, really.
>
You failed to notice the messages when I thanked the maintainers
when they fixed the bug. Please judge me on the facts, not just the
parts you pick out that make me look like a terrible person. IIRC,
that would be against the Debian Code of Conduct.
Best regards,
Chuck
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