On Thu, Apr 26, 2001 at 02:09:51PM +0800, zhaoway wrote: > You guys are getting more and more bureaucratic. That's sad. > > That said, why don't you report the bug directly to the upstream, instead > of insisting on this (bureaucratic) procedure of reporting bugs to > [upstream]
There is (should be) something different with maintainers forwarding bugs to upstream authors. When a Debian maintainer reports a bug to the upstream, the upstream knows that the bug report has been examined and evaluated, and most likely reproduced. It's more likely that the upstream people will pay more attention to that bug, since they know someone has bothered to analyze the problem already to make it easier for them. One other thing -- when the Debian maintainer has been working for some time with the upstream maintainer(s), s/he may know things like emails which are more often read or people among the upstream that might be more acceptive to an idea than others. Sure, that's cheating, but if it's for a worthy cause... :) > while both of you debian developers are pretty sure it's an upstream > issue? There's a bit of a psychological difference from the upstream standpoint when an individual user (whether he is a Debian developer or not) approaches them and asks them to do something that they might not like (keeping compatibility), and when the person who industriously maintains packages of their software approaches them and asks them the same. The end result won't always be different, of course. -- Digital Electronic Being Intended for Assassination and Nullification