On 10/1/2021 5:48 AM, Diederik de Haas wrote:
Hi Release Team,
I want to make sure that you're aware of what I consider HIGHLY inappropriate
behavior by Chuck where he is trying to sidestep/override the Xen maintainers
by filing this bug directly to the release.debian.org pseudo package.
I consider it also highly inappropriate for one volunteer to criticize
a newcomer volunteer without at least a Cc to the volunteer he is
criticizing, to give the volunteer under attack an opportunity to
respond and defend herself/himself.
This only appeared on the Debian Xen maintainers' ML because Chuck went on a
severity-dance where he *also* changed the severity of bug #994899, which _is_
assigned to the Xen package and therefor the Xen maintainers could see it.
In https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=994899#10 I tried to
steer the efforts to getting the issue fixed in a more constructive manner.
I failed at that.
We've already identified a possible fix, which I can point to if so desired, but
I don't think the RT should be bothered with this (dispute).
It may be news to Chuck, but not the RT, but a package maintainer has the
prerogative to include additional patches in the package that gets uploaded to
the Debian archive. (It happens all the time)
And that can introduce bugs. Shit happens. You learn from that. And then you
go on fixing those bugs *in coordination with* the package maintainers.
I agree package maintainers must have a say. and as far as I can tell the
Release Team has the final say on what goes into the stable release.
I have tried to cooperate with volunteers for the package maintainers,
but they refused to cooperate with me. When volunteers for the
package maintainers are uncooperative and excessively critical and
unfair to a newcomer volunteer, what is a newcomer to do?
Does Debian really consider this the best way to sustain the community
and acquire new developers as veterans move on or quit? IMHO, following
Diederik's approach toward newcomers will result in a slow and painful
death for Debian as competent developers move on and no one is there
to replace them because it is just not worth the personal attacks one
must endure when trying to contribute to Debian.
What you don't do, is try to go above/around them by addressing the RT
directly.
One should have at least the decency to directly To/CC the package maintainer
when you do, which in 99.99+% of cases you REALLY should not do.
One should also have the decency to Cc a person one is criticizing,
something i have done by sending a Cc to the person I am criticizing
(in my defense of his attack on me). Diederik did not have this decency
when he criticized me.
Respectfully,
Chuck Zmudzinski
Regards,
Diederik
