First, i'd like to apologise to the developers that witnessed me
"spazzing"(as one person described it) over the current state of debian and
it's stability/buggyness.
Ok, as a one-time debian tier-1 mirror server admin, and a 4 year user
of debian i'd like to make an observation that I recently went off in
#debian-devel over.
For some time now there has been an increasing trend in people that I
know who use debian. It is the view that debian is becoming increasingly
"old"/outdated, and that developers either a: dont' have the time to properly
maintain packages, or just don't care. Which the case is here I don't know. I'm
not intimate with a lot of developers. However, this has been the same view
that has been slowly dawning over me for a while now.
I see an increasing trend of two critical problems in the way debian
operates. #1 package age. Let me talk about this one first. There has been a
relatively (year or two) explosion in the package count. As this package count
has gone up, packages that I have used for years and that used to work well
have falen into a sad state or disrepair. I'll use CDRToaster as an example
here.
As debian "caught up" on versions, CDRToaster became increasingly
buggy. The last modification that I saw to it over a year ago was to let it
support > 8x CDR drives. I personaly took the time to patch it and send out a
patch. I never saw it in debian until the upstream included it approximatly 2
motnhs later. This is too long of a timeframe for a simple patch to take to
"fix" something. Now this was a feature enhancement and was easy to accept that
it took a bit to get back into debian.
The latest bug that has irked me to no end is the fact that cdrtoaster
has not worked with creating data tracks with a graft on the fly for an unknown
period of time. It's a simple fix really. Just add the option -graft-points to
the mkisofs command. Well, here is the buglist of cdrtoaster....
* #41009: cdrtoaster: cdrtoaster(1) manpage missing
Package: cdrtoaster; Reported by: Roland Rosenfeld <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; 2
years and 173 days old.
* #75204: cdrtoaster uses xterm
Package: cdrtoaster; Reported by: Normal User <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; 1 year
and 68 days old.
* #78892: unnecessary test for writeable CD-R device
Package: cdrtoaster; Reported by: Fred Gray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; 1 year
and 21 days old.
Note the age of all of these bugs. Over a year old each. Now the reason
for this aparantly is that CDRToaster hasn't been updated on the homepage since
Jan 2001 at ver 1.12. Obviously this package is DEAD. 8-P I'm sad to see it go
as I am on many usefull programs such as this one.
However, that leaves a problem. I've been told by several developers
that "it's an upstream problem. send them a patch and when they include it we
will update". Wel, that argument doesn't work in increasingly common cases like
this. At this point, it is now (IMHO) the debian packagers problem. If they are
unwilling or unable to fix it, then the package should be marked as "BAD" or
"dead-upstream" as a warning to the user that they should pick a different
utility like this one to use.
What I see happening is this. The package count has increased
proportionatly to the ammount of bugs per package. This is giving debian a bad
name. This is driving users away. Eventualy if this continues, debian WILL die
or be a nice distribution only diehard fans of it's ideals will use.
Now a little history for you to understand my view of why this
prevaling attitude is annoying to say the least, and has me up in arms over it
so to speak. When I signed on to distribute debian, it was rock solid. Packages
were only marginaly out of date. People loved it. Users loved it. Debian people
trash talked redhat daily over it's bugs.(not all debian folk, just the more
vocal and publicly seen ones). I have slowly stoped recomending it as the
number of people that tried it because of me has shifted from mostly "nice
distro. thanks" to "this is buggy, and out of date. thanks a lot. >:( ".
<IMPORTANT PART>
Ok, this has gotten long enough. I'm proposing as a user that you
(debian et al) find a way to somehow warn the user that this package is dead
upstream and that bugs aren't likely to get fixed if the maintainer is
unwilling/able to fix it. I am also proposing that it be required of a
maintainer that they have at least a rudimentary ability to fix minor bugs like
this.
It is my opinion that if you are putting your name to somethign that
you are providing for download, you are implying that you have accepted
responsibility for the quality of the software.
If this is not the case, then debian needs to stop labeling itself as a
"distro" in the users eyes, and clearly label itself as a system of packaging
volunteers that have NO responsibility for software bugs at all, and ONLY
responsible and track bugs that come from being packaged.
</IMPORTANT PART>
Ok, enough of this for tonight. I will now let you all discuss this
amongst yourselves since I am not a developer. Should the situation arise that
a: I have more free time, and b: that debian either accepts responsibility for
packages, or alternativly modifies it's public image to one of being a packager
only and keeps up with upstream stuff, then at that point i'd be interested in
joining the team to make debian better.
I would appreciate a CC: to [EMAIL PROTECTED] for any emails sent back
tot he list directly. For I am not on the debian-devel mailing list.:)
Sincerely,
A VERY concerned Debian end user.
Brian Wolfe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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