Re: rudeness in changelogs

[Roberto Sanchez <roberto@familiasanchez.net>]

Quoting Steve Greenland <steveg@moregruel.net>:

> On 08-Jan-05, 15:08 (CST), Joey Hess <joeyh@debian.org> wrote: 
> > Is this really called for in changelogs? Note that the bug reports were
> > perfectly polite.
> 
> Not really called for, but I understand the frustration with people who
> have nothing better to do than nag, and (for the second bug) without
> even checking the existing bugs!
> 
Did the maintainer bother to inform the submitter of that?  I know that
when I started with Debian a few years ago, I had no clue.  I barely knew
how to submit a bug, never mind figuring out how to see if it had already
been submitted.  I think the maintainer's words would have been more
productively employed in educating the submitter.  Granted, the Debian BTS
is much more intuitive that other bug tracking systems (e.g., Bugzilla),
but it is still a lot for newbie to grasp.

> > Imagining myself as a student in this class: I complete the requested
> > assignment, with luck make an A, only to have the prof post it to the
> > internet and then be insulted by perfect strangers as they use my work
> > to fix their problems.
> 
> These would be the same students who didn't even have the minimum
> decency to attempt to notify the upstream authors before publishing
> the bugs? I think taking a dig at them in the changelog is the *least*
> anyone should do.
> 

IIRC, DJB published the bugs, not the students.  Even if he didn't and the
students did, who cares?  It pains me to think that people who have a stake
in free software, as all Debian developers and users do, would stoop to such
childish antics.  We are all mostly adults, or at least close to it, we should
act like it.  Someone took the time to find a problem in one of our packages.
Regardless of how they went about it, we should thank them, fix the package
and feel happy that the goals of the Debian project have been furthered.

-Roberto

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