Re: Bug#896806: systemd-resolved violates The Debian Free Software Guidelines
On Mon, Apr 30, 2018 at 04:18:01PM +0300, Abdullah Ramazanoglu wrote:
>
> AFAIK it is still there untouched in git sources, as originally mentioned in
> the bug report https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=896806
>
> That aside, the question of whether it will ever get fixed in upstream or not,
> is of secondary importance. OTOH, the fact that official Debian developers and
> maintainers adopted a stance of neglecting users' privacy is of utmost
> importance.
>
That is a rather serious charge to make and one which is not supported
by the evidence in this matter. Without a doubt there are personality
issues, misunderstandings, and miscommunications. However, accusations
of malice should be made with the utmost of care or not at all.
> I had taken Debian Social Contract and DFSG for granted for a long time. This
> thing forced me to review my assumptions about Debian.
>
In what way? Debian as a project is made up of ~1000 official developers
and thousands more contributors enaged in a variety of different
efforts. To expect perfect conformance and adherence is somewhat
unreasonable. People make mistakes.
It appears that the issue here (with systemd-resolved) is most likely an
honest mistake or perhaps an oversight. Had Martin (the reporter of the
bug) ended his bug report with the sentence, "Unless all four conditions
are true, the default Google DNS servers are not used." and left out the
last few paragraphs, I suspect the reaction would have been somewhat
different. The fact is, however, that the second half of the bug report
is essentially a screed against Google, is focused entirely on the
"wrongs" of Google, completely ignores the fact that Google makes a
great deal of positive contribution to the community, and also ignores
the fact that quite a number of past and present Debian developers work
or have worked at Google.
A far more effective approach would have been to include a patch to the
Debian bug report that effected the desired change. Even better, a patch
should have been submitted to upstream that added a configure or build
option to disable the Google DNS servers. Then the Debian bug report
could have a included a link to the proposed upstream patch.
Speaking as someone who is involved in maintaining quite a few different
packages, my preferences for making changes to a Debian package are
odered like so:
1. New upstream release
2. Patch created from commit made to upstream source
3. Patch created from patch proposed to upstream project
4. Patch submitted to Debian BTS
5. Patch I have to conjure up myself
6. Somebody screaming at me that I need to fix something
Additionally, as the level of inflamatory rhetoric in a bug report
increases, the more difficult it is to get motivated to work on fixing
it.
Regards,
-Roberto
--
Roberto C. Sánchez
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