[gentoo-dev] Re: LibPNG Problems :(

[Seemant Kulleen]

Hi All,

Far be it from me to flame anyone.  I have not been keeping myself as up
to date on this list as I should.  However, I feel I must comment about
the libPNG issue.  First off, Spider and I decided to do it.  Neither of
us is a KDE person, so perhaps we underestimated the amount of hassle it
was to be for the KDE folks.

As for trolling, I do not think that Mrs. Loli-Queru was trolling. 
Rather, I think she brought up a valid point, and an obvious weakness in
the method that we chose to unleash the libpng update to people.  Her
point about recompiling X may not have been a literal one, but the
_effect_ of the update was as large as that (for KDE users).

There has been much discussion about it, and I am confident that such
things will not be repeated.  We are implementing a methodology that
allows smoother transitions.

As for the fact that it was a _choice_ to update.  Yes, it was.  However,
users tend to place a certain amount of trust in the distribution.  And as
such, putting them through a hassle like that is certainly not going to be
appreciated.  What we did not do as well as we could have was inform the
user of the magnanimity (if that is, indeed, a word) of the update.

To the users of KDE that were blindsided by this, please accept my
apology.  And, Mrs. Loli-Quero, despite the obvious weaknesses of
open-source, I think that we are striving to make headway and advances in
quality control (said libpng experience notwithstanding :), and we can
only improve.

Thanks,

Seemant