[gentoo-amd64] Re:

[Duncan]

"Dustin J. Mitchell" <dustin@×××××××.us> posted
20070706152051.GA25052@×××××××.us, excerpted below, on  Fri, 06 Jul 2007
10:20:51 -0500:

> Well, keep in mind that I run in what is probably a slightly different
> circle -- server admins.
>
> Gentoo has a *lot* to recommend it technically for administering a
> server -- fine-grained control, careful management of the upgrade path,
> transparency, extensibility, etc.
>
> But the cultural shift is painful when folks like me try to interact
> with the Gentoo user or developer community.  I think I'm a fairly
> technically adept person (hey, I passed the ebuild quiz), yet several of
> my bugs have been blown off fairly rudely, by developers who had
> obviously not read the entire bug.  Of course, interactions on IRC are
> even worse.
>
> The result is that I don't file bugs anymore -- I make a fixed local
> copy of the ebuild and call it a day.  Since I can't recommend that my
> clients and employers do the same, I set them up with a RedHat-derived
> base system and then hand-compile the necessary software on top of that.

I'm not a server admin and not dev, but I hang out on the dev group/list 
(group thru gmane), in large part because that's one thing I can do to 
get a heads-up on stuff coming down the pike before it affects me.  I'm 
also tech literate enough to generally understand development principles, 
but have only done bash scripts (with kdialog on occasion) on Linux, and 
VB back before MS decided they didn't want customers that actually cared 
about their privacy any more and forced me to jump to Linux. (Yes, I owe 
MS a bit of the credit for one of the best moves I ever made, OFF of MS! 
=8^P )  Maybe someday I'll be a dev, but it's slow going learning the 
stuff as a hobby, on one's own.

Anyway, so I hang out on the dev list.  Having done so since I switched 
from Mandrake (with Gentoo release 2004.1), I've been around awhile.  You 
think they're rough on you, try the dev list!  They are equally as rough 
on each other!

Basically what it comes down to is that people have to develop much 
thicker skins.  I had to.  It took awhile and I still believe things 
could be far better if people would just be a bit more tolerant, and read 
things in the light most favorable to the other guy instead of the least, 
particularly when there are cultural and language differences thrown in 
as well.

So yeah, don't take the rudeness personally.  If you can, learn to live 
with it.  Reopen the bug if need be, asking why it got closed without 
even being fully read.  Keep in mind "invalid" doesn't mean what it might 
look like, they /think/ the bug's invalid, but they aren't really calling 
you a know-nothing.  (Yes, I've had the invalid thing happen too, and it 
bothered me greatly at first.)  Sometimes you may have to jump thru a few 
hoops that you don't believe are necessary, but if it gets the bug 
fixed...  Not trying to name names, but in particular, bug wranglers is a 
tough job, and sometimes they get pretty cranky and even the devs think 
they've gone too far on occasion.

One thing I had occasion to learn, that I've observed many tech oriented 
folks haven't.  For years I was used to being the guru.  Then I joined an 
ISP (and the ISP's newsgroups) where there was a VERY high level of 
expertise, one guy was one of about 12 with full commit rights to one of 
the BSDs (I'm a Linux guy so don't remember which one), and they ALL (or 
it seemed that way) ran big web and mail servers and the like.  I was to 
them the newbie tech illiterate they had to explain things to, much as I 
was used to explaining things to others.

Well, let's just say I learned to shutup and listen pretty fast, and to 
qualify my statements much more accurately or cite references when I 
could.

That's an experience I've decided every tech oriented person needs to 
have.  It's REALLY an eye opening and humbling experience.  Unfortunately 
not so many get it.

Another thing is that many of these devs are still in school, college, 
even high school.  They're immature and their blood runs hot.  They may 
know their stuff decently well, but they don't have the perspective of 
years and it shows.  They may know their stuff, but they don't always 
know what they /don't/ know.

So anyway, yeah, I've learned to have a /much/ thicker skin.  I 
personally try to always be respectful and give the other guy the benefit 
of the doubt, but I know that's not the rules everybody plays by now, and 
if I have a point to make or a bug I want fixed, I'm a bit more insistent 
on it now.  Sometimes I shutup for awhile, but following the dev list, in 
a few months, there's often an excuse to point it out and effectively 
appeal the decision.  I've had several bugs eventually fixed with 
variances on the theme, and in fact just got a bug reopened that someone 
else had filed as well, that I stumbled upon myself.  (In this case it 
was a gcc-4.2.0 related bug, filed while that version was still masked.  
An announcement on the dev list just said they intend to unmask 4.2.0 to 
~arch in a few days, so it's time to reopen the bug and get it fixed.  I 
mentioned it as a reply to the announcement, and low and behold, less 
than an hour later, reopened it was, and reassigned to toolchain, with 
amd64 in the cc as it was amd64 -fPIC related too.)

Now you may or may not be willing to hassle all that, it's up to you.  If 
you can develop the thick skin, tho, and with a bit of patience, you can 
get some of those bugs fixed.

OTOH, even if you can develop a thick skin, it's still not something you 
can really recommend to others.  That remains true.  Maybe someday, but 
not ATM.  So with RH/Debian/whatever I'd recommend they stick too.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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