Hi Dalibor, I've suspended my discussion of the topic on -devel for the convenience of other Debianers (many of whom think Java is fat, slow, proprietary and silly).
I regret that I wasn't at FOSDEM with you, but I was inconveniently in America at the time. I'll also agree that we haven't had many email discussions but I do think that every one we have had has been initiated by me. But finger pointing isn't productive. If it helps anyone, I'll point the finger at me by saying I'm a pretty sucky Debian developer. I don't, however, totally suck and I do have enough seniority to demand that people follow the process. I'm not trying to make a fight out of this. I think if you sit down calmly, read over my emails and think things over you will see that I have reason to take issue with some of Arnaud's activities. I don't think those activities in a productive team effort. All this corporate manager sounding talk may drive some of you guys crazy but think over the alternatives. We can't have anarchy. In any case, I have decided to continue with my maintainership and have an alarming appetite for flamemail when I've put my mind to something. In the interest of saving everyone keystrokes I move that we get used to the fact that I am still the maintainer and talk about moving forward. Regards. On Thursday 04 March 2004 12:02, Dalibor Topic wrote: > He consulted the upstream, at least, the issue was discussed during > FOSDEM, as well as being raised every few weeks on debian-java without > much/any input from you, the official maintainer, except when people > ocassionally threatened to hijack the package. I'm a Kaffe developer, > who's working closely with Arnaud and other debian-java member on making > some progress on Kaffe's state in Debian, fixing and tracking down the > bugs that come up, as you can see in the bug database. > > I must say that I am very pleased to have found some responsive, > proactive debian developers, who talk to the upstream and work with us > on solving the problems as they occurr. I've rarely had any e-mail > exchange with the official Kaffe maintainer in Debian, and unfortunately > he was not seen very often on the project's mailing lists in the last > two years, at least, despite Kaffe having numerous RC bugs that required > cooperation with the upstream. Instead, we had an unpleasant duplication > of work on fixing kaffe 1.1.x on several platforms due to gcc no longer > accepting some broken C code a few months ago. The official Kaffe > maintainer didn't contact the upstream to see if any work was already in > progress, and didn't forward the work done in Debian to upstream. > > So I'm quite disappointed by attempts to make Arnaud look bad on > debian-devel for trying to work around the official maintainer's current > lack of time to commit to working on the package, and the lack of > communication with the upstream. > > > The last significant change to Kaffe from a *packaging* perspective was > > migrating it to DBS and that was my work. Your recent NMUs (which have > > been insanely numerous) disabled DBS by simply renaming the patches > > directory to "no-patches". That isn't adding value and was done without a > > byte of email consulting me. > > He moved patches that didn't apply anymore to their own directory, > AFAIK, after consulting with me (i.e. an upstream developer) which > patches still were relevant. That was hard to figure out ocassionally, > since the debian ChangeLogs for the patches are very limited in > describing what was changed and why that was done. If he made a mistake > there, blame me for not being able to figure out what a patch was good > for, despite being an upstream developer. > > > Without sarcasm I will tell you again that I appreciate your enthusiasm > > and want to work with you. Simply be aware that I will not be ignored and > > will not tolerate haphazard changes that are not cleared with me first. > > There is nothing unreasonable about that attitude and nothing that is out > > of line with policy. > > I appreciate your willingness to cooperate. Maybe we can finally see > that kaffe-strike-force truly take shape. > > But I don't appreciate the 'Do as I say, or else' attitude. If you think > Arnaud's packages are inferior, please fix them and work with him on > making better ones in the future, instead of wasting everyone's time > dragging him through the mud of a debian-devel flamewar in order to show > that you're still 'in control'. That's childish: either you have enough > time to work on improving the kaffe package, then go for it, or you > don't, but then please don't waste other people's time whining on > debian-devel how you've been treated wrong by people actually trying to > do the work. > > So if you don't want to be ignored, please try to be more proactively > helpful instead. Get that kaffe-strike-force thing going, accept > Arnaud's excuse, and excuse yourself for your tone, so that we can make > some real progress on getting Kaffe into testing. Let's look ahead, not > behind us. > > If you don't want that, you can still drop the package, or wait till > you're officialy removed, this time with the protocol being followed to > the letter. > > > For the time being I will leave you as an Uploader on the condition that > > you communicate your intended changes with me first and only upload when > > I am grossly unresponsive (ie. more than a week). My preference is to > > receive changes in the form of a DBS patch. > > The whole point is that you were grossly unresponsive. I realize that > you have other commitments beside maintaining Kaffe, and I don't blame > you for that. I just think that maintaining a package that's supposed to > be one of the basic building blocks for getting more java applications > into main, is maybe a little too much for a single person alone now. It > seems that most of debian-java developers agree with me [1] on that. > > > ps. Developers with platform specific experience who would like to see > > Kaffe remain on sparc, os390, alpha and so forth should please try to get > > Kaffe to build from source. Even if the JIT won't compile on your > > platform there may be hope for the interpreter. Drop me a line if you > > have interest or success stories. > > And they can also hop on our mailing list on [EMAIL PROTECTED], and on the > IRC channel #kaffe on irc.freenode.org for some hands-on introduction to > the code base. Fixing the compiler warnings should be an easy excercise > to get you started. -- Ean Schuessler, CTO Brainfood, Inc. http://www.brainfood.com -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
