First of all let me reconsider my opinion after a carefully read on Quanah arguments and references about OpenLDAP packages around some distros. I had read the archives of this list, specifically about GnuTLS problems with OpenLDAP on Debian and now I understand the point of view of OpenLDAP developers. In fact, not only understands as I fully support it now. So sorry if was missing the point at my first email.
I feel very sad to hear about the lack of resources on Debian and most sad with myself to not be involved on it as much as I wish. I use Debian every day on my work and I couldn't help the Debian community in the same way that the community help me. I hope that I can change this some day and become heavily involved to help in the packages maintenance. Keep up with this great work in OpenLDAP development and support guys! :) On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 8:38 PM, Russ Allbery <r...@stanford.edu> wrote: > Dan Pritts <da...@internet2.edu> writes: > > On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 10:36:09AM -0400, Alex McKenzie wrote: > > >> perhaps something the devels should think about. If they decide to > >> continue on the way they have... well, that's their option. It's their > >> project, and they can do what they want with it. But they should at > >> least be aware that people are concerned about the current methods. > > > I tend to agree with Alex, FWIW, but I too recognize that I get what I > > pay for. > > Out of fairness want to note that the most significant component of the > problems with the OpenLDAP packages for Debian (and Ubuntu, to a somewhat > lesser degree) is that the packaging team has basically no resources. > Only two of us have done much work over the past year or two, and then > only as we've found time, and neither of the two of us who are active have > any free time to spare to increase the amount of work that we're doing > significantly. > > This is not something that either is the fault of the OpenLDAP project or > something that any of the OpenLDAP developers can address even if they > wanted to unless they wanted to become experts in Debian packaging. > Debian and Ubuntu need more people with a thorough understanding of Debian > packaging working on improving the packages. > > At this point, nearly all complaints about the state of the Debian > packages are rightfully directed at the lack of resources on the Debian > side. There may be some issues that could be reasonably considered a > shared responsibility were the packages in much better shape, but at this > point they're swamped by the lack of volunteer resources to absorb new > upstream releases and do reasonable bug triage. > > Unfortunately, we're currently in a state where the people involved in the > packaging don't have enough free time to teach even interested parties > about packaging so that they can come up to speed and help. We really > need volunteers who already know the packaging components and can start > working at that level without needing much additional resources or > training. Both Steve and I are already doing about a dozen other > high-profile things for Debian and are both involved in the packaging of > OpenLDAP primarily out of pure self-interest in not wanting to see the > packages go completely untended, not because we have any realistic ability > to maintain the packages as they properly should be maintained. > > I do the Debian package maintenance for OpenAFS, which has a similar or > higher change rate as OpenLDAP and also doesn't do a lot of support for > old stable versions, but the end user experience is much, much better and > the same complaints are not present simply because on the packaging side > I'm able to apply more resources. I have the time to aggressively package > new versions, pull up upstream changes inbetween releases (admittedly, > made *far* easier than it would be for OpenLDAP by OpenAFS's use of Git), > and backport newer versions for users of Debian stable. When Debian users > of OpenAFS run into problems fixed in later versions, I can just tell them > to go to the version from backports.org to solve their problem. This > doesn't require any additional work from the OpenAFS upstream maintainers. > > There's absolutely no reason why the same thing couldn't be true of the > OpenLDAP packages for Debian and Ubuntu, without any changes whatsoever to > how the OpenLDAP developers run their project. All it requires is > volunteers and time. > > -- > Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/> >
