On 2016-10-25 07:33 +0200, Tollef Fog Heen wrote: > ]] Ian Jackson > > > * Specifically, failed to give clear and constructive directions to > > those willing to do the work; > > I disagree with those characterisations. He's asked for clarifications > on what is broken without anything resembling an adequate reply.
NOW, yes, when after 5 years people gave up filing bugs and brought it to the technical committee. _Now_ Ron has ample time to write very long responses. But the problem is that he didn't respond usefully in the bugs, for years. Various people said 'the debian version doesn't work, but the current upstream version does, can we upgrade please?'. And were mostly ignored or given short shrift. (Vincent just posted URLS). Normal people, who are not of the Ian and Ron (and me) 'old-school Debian, we quite like an argument' personality type, find this _extremely_ offputting. I am only involved because I work with Punit and he came to me asking for advice on what to do. He's not posting here because the last thing he wants is an argument (you know, the sort of quiet person who _really_ doesn't like arguments). He thinks it's silly that we can't have a newer version of global, but if that's what decided, then fine. He won't argue - he'll just use upstream, debian will be stuck with the ancient version, and we'll have lost a contributor. As he points out - there are many, many other things he can do with his spare time that don't involve an argument or dealing with a difficult maintainer. So if this thing is only assessed in terms of who is the most enthusiastic debater then Ron wins (he's very good at it). I realise this makes things harder for the TC to assess, because they see a rather one-sided view. I would just ask them to bear personalities and communication preferences in mind. (As I said to Punit, 'everything used to be like this, but we improved a lot in the last few years, and this is much rarer than it used to be'). Debian used to have a (largely deserved) reputation as an unpleasant project to work in. We've done a lot in the last few years to improve that situation. I invite the TC to reflect on how this would have played out if global had had a different maintainer. This is (or should be) about attitude, responsiveness, and helpfulness, at least as much as the technical (htags) debate. Wookey -- Principal hats: Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM http://wookware.org/
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