<Your email was a bunch of single lines. I formatted it sanely below.)
On Tue, 7 Sep 1999, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> On Monday 6 September 1999, at 20 h 49, the keyboard of "Ean R . Schuessler"
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > have perhaps not been optimally responsive I believe that I have kept my
> > kaffe installs fairly current.
>
> Ean, you will not like what I'll write. If you prefer to stay cool, you may
> want to delete this message right now.
Well, he is currently away from the office(in dallas) in california for a
few days. I guess I will respond for him(his email to Mike about the nmu
wasn't harsh enough, in my mind(I maintain netscape, amoung others)).
> IMHO, you do not take care a lot of the Debian package of kaffe. It is not a
> personal attack (you certainly do a lot of work for free software on other
> projects) but I have the same experience as Mike Goldman: the bug list of
> kaffe is not addressed very often and anyone can see it on the BTS.
Well, foo on you. He does do a good job. And this is not me being payed to
say this(he is my employer). If you don't like the way he is doing it, ASK
him first. He does respond to email. The old bugs in the bts are from before
he became maintainer, so he hasn't gotten email on them.
He has fixed bugs in his uploads, just not closed them in the bts(36711 and
39297).
> There are certainly good reasons (job, family, illness, etc). I don't care
> with them: we are not trying to distribute rewards or blames, we are trying
> to make Debian work at best. Free Java has already enough problems.
You don't make debian work by subversively taking over other peoples packages.
Debian is based on trust and communication. Mike has shown neither, and with
your email, I wonder about your intentions as well.
> I know it is uncommon in Debian to simply say the truth ("You no longer does
> a fine job on this package") but I believe we should take this habit.
This is true as well. Which is why I am sending this email.
> Since I find that Mike Goldman currently does a fine job with jikes, I
> certainly support the take over.
Actually, the way in which Mike did this nmu is not reflective of a good
debian maintainer. Was any bug filed in the bts, with an nmu patch, before
this nmu was uploaded? No. Was Ean contacted about whether he was still
actively working on kaffe? No. Was the version given to kaffe in this nmu
even considerate of the fact that it was a nmu, and that it should allow the
real maintainer to be able to upload a new deb with a version that does NOT
need an epoch? No.
<rant topic="off slightly">
Debian is about communication. Email. Irc. Phone. Conferences. Anything.
But not blind work. This is a community project, not just a bunch of
individuals who happen to all put out software in the same format. If we
can't communicate, then I am afraid Debian will suffer.
It is unfortunate that Debian is coming to this. There have been several
recent issues related to this. The whole -ja issue, the needless emails on a
ballooning -private, the FHS issue. All have been needless bickered about,
when a little bit of talk before the fact could have saved a lot of headaches.
</rant>
Adam(who is even now going to look at kaffe on behalf on Ean)
