Re: Why are some Debian bugs ignored for a long time?
On 8/20/2022 1:25 AM, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 19, 2022 at 05:06:38PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > On 8/19/2022 4:44 PM, piorunz wrote:
> > > On 19/08/2022 18:57, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > >
> > > > I have noticed that some Debian bugs are ignored for a long time [...]
> > >
> > > Hi Chuck,
> > >
> > > Maybe because developers/maintainers are not paid by the hour, but mere
> > > volunteers, don't you think?
>
> There is another point: the package maintainer is very autonomous
> in how (s)he does her thing. This has advantages and disadvantages.
>
> There are processes in place for resolving such situations as when
> a maintainer becomes unresponsive (perhaps (s)he has moved on to
> other things, perhaps (s)he is in some situation of distress). Among
> others, there is the NMU [0].
I know about nmu, and I submitted one once but withdrew it because the
package maintainer did eventually indicate a fix the problem was coming
once I sent out the nmu.
>
> This question comes up regularly in this list. Had you searched
> the archives, you'd found things like this [1] with advice (hint:
> this would leave developers more time for fixing bugs ;-)
>
> There is good advice by Jonathan Dowland in the linked thread on
> how to do something about it. Want to give it a try?
>
> > So that means "free" software written and maintained by volunteers will never be as
> > stable and secure as software that is written by people who are paid by the hour.
>
> This is, of course, nonsense. This would be only the case if
> the instance giving out the cash had an interest on the software
> being "stable and secure". Most of the time they have an interest
> on the software being sold, or on it generating cash flow via
> other means (gathering user data, for that to be sold, for example).
>
> So they will allocate their resources accordingly. I've worked
> in the belly of big corps for a while and I assure you that my
> boss wouldn't allow me to fix a bug unless (s)he could justify
> to their bosses that the 1400 dollars "spent" on this are coming
> back in some way.
>
> Witness the whole history of Microsoft software with its incredible
> ecosystem of malware, and you'll see how wrong your idea is :)
>
> So each "world" has its upsides and (surprise!) its downsides.
>
> That doesn't mean I wouldn't like to see projects like Debian
> better funded, mind you. There are also people thinking about
> this. There are companies which sponsor Debian, there are
> companies which let employees work for Debian on their company
> time; one seemingly successful example is Freexian [2], which
> offers services by keeping alive older versions of Debian.
>
> I get you want to contribute?
Yes, that's what mystifies me. I don't know why Debian ignores
someone who wants to contribute time to help the project.
In another case, the bug was upstream and although I reported the
bug on Debian first, marked it 'patch' and 'upstream' in the BTS, it was
still being ignored, so I just submitted the patch directly to upstream who
accepted my patch.
Usually upstream projects want and expect users to report bugs to
the distro, not to the upstream project, for many good reasons that I
need not explain here. Then the distro package maintainer, rather
than the user, interacts with the upstream developers and maintainers.
Of course if the distro maintainers ignore upstream bugs reported to the
distro, the whole free software ecosystem will suffer, not just Debian.
Best regards,
Chuck
> [0] https://wiki.debian.org/NonMaintainerUpload
> [1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2022/05/threads.html#00028
> [2] https://www.freexian.com/services/debian-lts.html
>
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