Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems

Posted Sep 8, 2014 13:31 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205)
In reply to: Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems by ebassi
Parent article: Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems

I doubt very much that will ever happen. They've spent roughly the last two decades acting like the worst stereotypes of teenagers (e.g. http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html) and at this point it seems a safe bet that the culture they have built up is firmly set in that mode and will never leave it. You may see it as insulting or derogatory but I suspect the people saying it see it as simply an acknowledgement of a disappointing fact.

Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems

Posted Sep 8, 2014 13:59 UTC (Mon) by ebassi (subscriber, #54855) [Link] (1 responses)

They've spent roughly the last two decades acting like the worst stereotypes of teenagers

if I had a nickel every time somebody linked Jamie's CADT not ironically, I'd be a millionaire. that page is not the gospel from on high, and if you think nobody, ever, declared "bug bankruptcy" and marked stuff as obsolete or "needs reproduction with a newer version", then you, like Jamie, are kidding yourself. plus, as a user and as a maintainer, I prefer upstreams closing bugs with OBSOLETE/NEEDINFO, as opposed to bugs lying around forever. it's not like Jamie couldn't re-open bugs at the time either: he just decided to be a prick about it (jwz acting like an emo teenager instead of an adult? that literally never happened in the history of ever!)

anyway, you'll note that for the past 20 years we had distributions, and for the past 20 years distributions did shield many upstreams. if things change, and responsibilities shift, processes will change — or projects will simply die. we are actually discussing this in GNOME, and have been doing that since we started generating continuous integration VM images. plus, the people doing the security updates downstream will just have to push their work upstream, like they already do. it's not like the people that comprise security and QA teams in distributions will magically cease to exist.

Poettering: Revisiting how we put together Linux systems

Posted Sep 8, 2014 14:24 UTC (Mon) by Arker (guest, #14205) [Link]

"if I had a nickel every time somebody linked Jamie's CADT not ironically, I'd be a millionaire."

I do not doubt that one bit. But it sounds like you need to think about why that is true.

"if you think nobody, ever, declared "bug bankruptcy" and marked stuff as obsolete or "needs reproduction with a newer version", then you, like Jamie, are kidding yourself."

And that is just a straw man. Neither I nor Jamie nor anyone else I can think of right off has said otherwise. The issue is not declaring bug bankruptcy, the problem is a long-term, consistent pattern of ignoring bugs, avoiding maint. and refusing to fix, simply kicking every problem down the road till the next version comes out and 'bug bankruptcy' is invoked.

"it's not like Jamie couldn't re-open bugs at the time either"

There is little more pointless than re-opening or re-filing a bug with the same team that studiously ignored your bug for years already.

And this was really an old pattern already by the time jwz wrote that. Let me repeat that - 12 years ago, when jwz wrote that, this was already an old pattern.

Sure it would be different if this were a new project, or one that had a good reputation. But it's just not. GNOME has been on this past for nearly 15 years, expecting that to suddenly change seems quite irrational.