Soren Andersen wrote: > I am somehow quite sure that ESR didn't write fetchmail and doesn't > continue to work on fetchmail, so that it is broken for many users. This > bug seems to be quite noxious to me and while ESR might not have created > the code that melds fetchmail with ssl, I think he might at least > appreciate being made aware of this issue. What action he could take, I > do not know. But if I was in your shoes, I would write to him. Of course > *check* (on principle) the WWW page and in-package documentation for > fetchmail first to make sure there's not a note indicating that he's > already aware, but I suspect you have and there's not. He said that bug #184469 had already been forwarded upstream, which presumably means it was already sent to ESR or some list ESR reads. The bug log will have the specifics. But I'd mail ESR too in this situation, to ask him if there was a patch, and to make sure that whoever forwarded the bug did not forward it along with a lone period. :-) > Debian maintainership problems seem hard to solve to me and one of the > big buggaboos (that's a technical term ;-) of Free Software. It appears > there's a big cultural thing that makes people refrain from levelling > criticism at maintainers who, after all, are unrenumerated. No, not at all. I can look at a package's bug list and other measures of activity and tell in 5 minutes if it is being well maintained, and I'm not afraid of telling someone they're doing a bad job. Do it all the time, unfortunatly. A Debian developer agrees to accept certian responsibilities when they maintain a package, much as a parent does when they have a child[1], renumeration doesn't really enter into it. > Nevertheless > I've been affected by unmaintained packages myself and it makes me grind > my teeth HARD. I don't have a solution, though. Except turn to RedHat > (or Progeny) and I am not ready to do that. Post a message to the debian-devel list with the specifics and something will be done. Public humilation works, and you can even accomplish it fairly politely. -- see shy jo [1] I've seen some accidental packages too.
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