On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 1:58 PM, Kay Schenk <kay.sch...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 5:49 AM, Andrea Pescetti <pesce...@apache.org>wrote: > >> Rob Weir wrote: >> >> On Thu, Feb 14, 2013 at 7:34 AM, Andrea Pescetti wrote: >>> >>>> Fine. I would have started the vote earlier, but it's your code so I'll >>>> respect your choice. And it's good to give people more time to think >>>> (not to >>>> >>> We had a committer veto. Why are having a vote? A -1 from a >>> commmitter is not something we vote on. >>> >> >> Vetos must be based on technical grounds and can be withdrawn, see >> http://www.apache.org/**foundation/voting.html#Veto<http://www.apache.org/foundation/voting.html#Veto> >> (no, I haven't seen a clearly stated "technical ground" in Kay's mail). >> Due to the exceptional amount of posts in this thread, a proper vote is now >> the clearest way out, and in case of opposition it will allow to record >> clearly what the technical reason was. > > > I readily admit this is true. I would like my veto to stand and here I will > elaborate and hopefully provide my technical justification. > > In my mind, current mathematical information aside, we have implemented an > acceptable solution based on the ODF specification. If, at some point, some > universal mathematical body says without doubt that 0^0 should never ever > be considered 1, then I am assuming the ODF standards body would change the > standard for that function, and we would then change the current > calculation. > > I have seen many references to this "issue" on the web, some which support > the current implementation, some of which do not. In my mind, this needs to > go back to OASIS. > > So for what it's worth, this is my technical justification. We are not a > mathematical body, we are implementing code that complies to the ODF > standard. > > If "we" have a problem with that standard, "we" need to discuss it with the > standards body, not change existing code because of a personal viewpoint. >
And so it is clear, my technical objection is: Backwards compatibility of spreadsheet documents, and calculations specifically, is critical. If AOO 4.0 returns results that are even a penny different than earlier versions than this would be a severe defect. If we found such a defect even the day before a major release we would probably treat it as a "stop ship" blocking issue. Any change that breaks backwards compatibility is a technical issue. Fact: Pedro's patch changes the results of spreadsheet calculations in OpenOffice, introducing an error where there was not one before. Finally, treating 0^0 == 1 is very common in programming languages and spreadsheets, being the value returned by OpenOffice since 1.0, as well as by Calligra Sheets, Google Docs, Symphony, LibreOffice, Java, C, and .NET. Anyone arguing that the value is incorrect faces a mountain of contrary opinion and practice. Regards, -Rob > >> >> The patch needs to be reverted, now. >>> >> >> Please do not go on and revert it now, and please do not escalate the >> problem again (this friendly advice applies to Pedro too). It is a trivial >> issue, with no side effects on the rest of the code, and it will be quickly >> solved by voting (where a -1 from a committer with a clearly stated >> "technical ground" counts as veto) well before a release, or even a beta >> version, containing it is distributed. >> >> Overstating the problem or insisting on this, no longer fruitful, >> discussion would only drain resources from more important topics. I >> recommend that we put community over code, suspend this discussion, take a >> final vote when Pedro calls it and respect its outcome, whatever it is. >> >> Regards, >> Andrea. >> > > > > -- > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > MzK > > "A great deal of talent is lost to the world > for want of a little courage." > -- Sydney Smith
