On Sun, Aug 26, 2007 at 01:40:57PM -0400, Todd Zullinger wrote: > You may well know what the package to maintainer ratio is in Fedora. > If not, it's rather large, with nearly 4700 source packages in the > distro and a little other 400 maintainers. I don't think it's all > that unreasonable to ask that users help out by reporting bugs to > bugzilla. > > I do understand your hesitation of the package seems so full of bugs > that it's pointless. However, if that doesn't get bugzilla'd, then > other maintainers may not find out for a while that something is > horribly awry in the mantis package and that someone needs some help > (or a smack with the cluestick). So, a bugzilla may be the most > helpful thing you could do for a terribly broken package, even if it > just says that there are numerous problems (listing them briefly) > with the package and the whole things needs work. Todd, the whole open source bazaar is a multi-lateral trade area, as the term bazaar suggests. Most of us are not in this out of the kindness or our hearts, but because we want to get something done. I went to install the Mantis RPM because I wanted to get something done. I hit a problem. Instead of tossing the RPM and installing the tarball, I asked on the list. I made a good faith effort to look at the suggestions I got, and none of those panned out. I decided I had done my due dilligence for the community, and have now installed the tarball. It may not be unreasonable to ask, but I just determined that in this instance the answer was "no". > > As for following every single thread, that's a straw man argument. > > It isn't hard to write a filter to make emails with certain key > > words (e.g. "mantis") jump out at you. > > Bugzilla has the advantage that it mails the maintain automatically > and that the conversations there are more easily searchable on various > fields. > > I think you should view it as a plus that some maintainers do take the > time to follow this list, not as a negative that all of them don't. > And always keep in mind that since the OS and all the work to create > it are given to you for free, it's not that much to ask for you to > report problems in the place that's most accommodating to the > maintainer. (And I'm not saying that you don't report things to > bugzilla personally. I know from my own little travels in bugzilla > that isn't true. :) Thanks for the parenthetical acknowledgement. Everyone has to determine for themselves what contributions they will make to the community. I doubt very much I know all of yours, and you may not know all of mine. Nor do we need any central Soviet telling us, "Comrade Zullinger, you haven't written enough lines of free software this week. Back to your terminal!" So if you don't mind, I will determine whether something is "that much to ask" of me. > > I'd read your mails and thought about trying to take a look at getting > the rpm to see what might be broken with it. I do detest mantis as a > user. I've hated having to interact with it every time I've reported > a bug to an upstream that used it. So I figured I'd wait and see if > someone else helped you out before putting myself through some likely > pain. ;-) Thanks for the thought. No-one has to do anything on this list, except maybe the paid employees whose duties encompass such things. > > > And another thought, Rahul: maintainers can ignore bugzilla entries > > same as they can emails. I've had one bug (189120) oustanding since > > 2006-04-17, and no-one has yet taken ownership, never mind actually > > done anything about it. > > That is certainly true. Just because someone maintains a package > doesn't mean that they do it well. Having things in bugzilla though > makes it easier to find those lax maintainers and give them the help > (or kick) that they need. Other folks can run reports on bugzilla to > find which maintainers have been unresponsive to bugs. Then, if it's > appropriate, there's the AWOL maintainer process for those folks that > just stop responding to bugs/updates/needed changes in their packages. That's a good point. > > (In the case of the above bug, it's also possible that it was fixed in > a newer gnome release and it just didn't get closed properly. Nope, hasn't been fixed as far as I know. Sorry, I thought that was implied when I described the bug as "outstanding" rather than "still open". > It may also have gotten lost in the forest of desktop bugs. It's > assigned to Ray Strode who isn't someone I'd consider a lax > maintainer. He does a lot of work with upstream gnome projects and > within the Fedora desktop team. So I'd guess the lack of response > there is due to the latter. As you say, probably an upstream bug. Given the likely nature of the problem, I doubt it's a packaging issue. Speaking of "too much to ask", could Mr. Strode enter the upstream issue number or URL and mark the bug appropriately? He hasn't even taken ownership, so I have no reason to believe he has reported it upstream. > ) -- Charles Curley /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign Looking for fine software \ / Respect for open standards and/or writing? X No HTML/RTF in email http://www.charlescurley.com / \ No M$ Word docs in email Key fingerprint = CE5C 6645 A45A 64E4 94C0 809C FFF6 4C48 4ECD DFDB
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