I think a number of people are frustrated on this list.  And I'm not
talking about just newbie types who post "it doesn't work" messages.

I'm talking about serious testers who post good posts with plenty of
information.  Sometimes even including the fixes to their problems.

I think I understand the core root of this frustration.  I think a
number of people have touched on it.  A short while back we had a
discussion which resulted in Warly posting this message:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=mandrake-cooker&m=101540212315890&w=2

Which I agree with wholeheartedly.  However, the sad thing is I feel
that the what happened to bugzilla has pretty much already happened to
cooker anyway.  And this is the core of why many contributors are
frustrated.  They feel that their quality submissions have been ignored.
That major problems are shipping that shouldn't be.

Now I think we all here can understand (even if we don't agree with)
Mandrake's time crunch for producing this distribution.  They have
committments to meet.

However, I think they have a committment to us the contributor to do a
couple things.  If they do this I think a lot of the disent on this list
about what is shipped will go away.

1)  As soon as release and or freeze dates are decided on let everyone
know here on the list.  I really don't see a reason why these need to be
secret.  The community contributes a lot to Mandrake's process and that
community needs to be clued in on scheduling.

2)  Submissions of problems and especially fixes need to be responded to
even if it is a simple.  "Sorry too late we will not be able to fix this
in time for the distribution."  I think many of us are experiencing this
and it's very frustrating.  

I myself posted a fix for the error about TMOUT being readonly when
using Eterm (or login shell under any other term).  I emailed it to the
list and the maintainer of the files that required fixing.  To this date
I've yet to receive a response from anyone at Madrake.  That really
sucks guys.  I spent a day of my time figuring this out and providing a
solution.  Now I can understand if due to time contraints that it can't
be tested and included in the distribution.  But at least acknowledge
the time that someone spent in putting together that report or that fix
for you.

Don't get me wrong.  I am not sitting here whining because you didn't
aren't going to include it.  And I'm not sitting here making the
unreasonable demand that Mandrake never ship something that has some
known problems with it.  But please guys let's get a little better
communication going on here.  

That's my 2 cents on the issue and all I'm going to say...

-- 
Ben Reser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
http://ben.reser.org

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism
or the holy name of liberty and democracy? - Ghandi

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