Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Public Relations

[Alastair Tse]

On Wed, 2003-07-02 at 06:42, Paul wrote:
> I have been conditioned to not submit ebuilds anymore, after
> having submitted them regularly for some time; (I touch upon this
> in bug 6808) I still hope to continue contributing bugs,

Hi Paul,

I've always tried to stay out of this "-core being open" debate because
I too don't feel much either way. But that bug reference has pushed me
to answer some of your concerns in this email.

Comment on the your concerns about submitted ebuilds being ignored. At
least on all the bugs I'm assigned, I _try_ to give feedback whenever it
is possible, say what is holding up an ebuild going into portage, and be
frank about what I think about the ebuild or the fitness of the
application/library. Of course, you'll find exceptions to that comments
if you go thru all my bugs :P

In this case with gbonds, given that most, if not all, devs in
gnome@g.o are not US citizens and have no US bond. It was very
difficult for us to support the ebuild to any degree. With committing
the ebuild, comes responsibility and expectation that it would work. For
example, similar situation I encounter now is I'm maintaining
gphoto2/gtkam suite even though I have no digital camera compatible with
that. Users come to me with bugs about it, and I can't do any real
bugfixing on it. Sure it compiles, installs, and launches, but I can't
verify any of the functionality.

Maybe we really need dedicated users who do commit to being responsible
for a particular package because they are very familiar with it, and
actively submit version updates, help to debug problems with the
package, etc. We don't have a system for this right now, although some
time previously, we had the idea of "watchers" who would be similar to
that type of user. But I don't know what happened to the idea or why it
was abandoned.

> preferably with patches. (although I often have better luck just
> pushing them upstream.) This is ok for me, since writing ebuilds

Pushing patches upstream is always easier, because they'll either be
rejected and accepted. The problem with us maintaining patches that are
not officially accepted is that the developers for the package will
blame us for modifying their app/library and refuse to support Gentoo
users, leaving a sour taste in both the developer's and user's mouth.

> 	Instead of tortured analogies, just say it the way it
> is; "we want core closed, and if you dont like it, you are free
> to choose another distribution, or fork..."

I'm very certain that has never been the view of the dev-team. I've
certainly not encountered anyone who has said anything similar to this.

> organisation. (Ive seen it on my local LUG list-- people saying
> 'Ive heard this and that and this; maybe youd better think twice
> before commiting to Gentoo...')  That is to say, these feelings
> and doubts are very real, and I hope that even though core
> members find them baseless, that they find a way to communicate
> that without seeming so condescending.

Well, distro wars are what LUGs are about, or that's what I've heard :)
Anyway, I'll have my small comment about -core opening up. I could write
a whole essay if I wanted to. So, if we do open up -core, what is to say
that devs would not push inter-dev communication on contentious issues
to private CC lists, or a gentoo-core-core?

Also, how open do these lists have to be? Would people comprimise on an
archive that just lists the subjects discussed on -core? This would
alleviate "security matters" being exposed because only the topic would
not provide enough details for anyone to pre-emptively exploit, or would
it?

On the concluding note, before I became a dev, I didn't even know a
-core list existed, and to be honest, I didn't even care. What I was
trying to do was just make the distro I was using better. Getting
involved with a distro is more than reading mail archives of -core,
getting involved is actually contributing to the distro or help other
users.

I understand this issue will never go away. Maybe someone with enough
time on their hands would actually write a summary on all the arguments
presented since the beginning of time about -core. That would be an
interesting read :)

Cheers,
-- 
Alastair 'liquidx' Tse
 >> Gentoo Developer
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