On 3/19/06, Petter Reinholdtsen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > [Sven Luther] > > I am not saying that there needs to be an immediate response, or all > > patches need to be applied, but i believe that it is elementary > > politeness from a package maintainer, to at least aknowledge a patch > > or bug report when it is submitted. > > I believe you are wrong. If you are right, then I am a very impolite > maintainer, as I have too many packages with too many bugs to look > after, so I do not manage to look at, nor acknowledge and comment on, > all the reported bugs against them, nor evaluate or commit the patches > provided. But I try my best, and fail to see why your assumption that > my behavior is impolite can in any way be correct.
So what do you think about long-term ignored bug reports? Do you think that should not be considered any issue/problem? > > As for the bug reporter, and the patch submitter, being ignored > > for a long time when it is clear there is activity, is a proof > > that his work in searching for the bug, and in trying (even if > > clumsily) to find a patch is wasted time, and motivation to do so > > in the future will fall. > > Well, I believe a bug reporter and patch submitter is better off if > she accepts the rewarding thoughts of a job well done, and not waste > time waiting for others to acknowledge it too. Working on free > software need to be self motivated, or one will end up very frustrated > as there is almost no external rewards. > > All we can do is to make sure the bugs we find and the patches we > create are published and easy to find for the others that work on the > same package and find the same problem, and then work with the > upstream developers and distribution maintainers to get them to look > at the issue. Expecting this to happen by itself after submitting an > email without careful attention from the bug reporter or patch writer > is not going to cause anything but grief and frustration. > > I've sent hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of patches to developers > and maintainers, and had lots of them ignored for a long time. There > is no point for me to accuse the developers and maintainers of > anything but having other priorities than me and having other things > to spend time on. The only way to try to get them to look at "my" > issue is by talking to them and attract their attention to the issue. > > And as the lead developer of debian-edu, a contributing member of > debian-gis and debian-java, a long time contributor of > debian-installer and a vocal proponent of working in groups within > debian, I believe I have some experience to back my claim that my > approach work and lower the frustration level of working on free > software. Yes, it is still a bit frustrating to see patches submitted > to BTS being ignored for years, but at least I know that the > responsivility for this is on my end, not having spend enough time > working with the developer and maintainer to get him to give the task > enough priority. Why do claim that can be the only reason a patch is being ignored? > It does no good to try to blame anyone else but > myself for this, and I recommend the rest of you to place the blame > there as well. :)
