On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 01:21:49PM -0500, Colin Watson wrote: > On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 07:29:14PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers wrote: > > On Wed, Apr 10, 2002 at 01:31:35AM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > > > On Tue, Apr 09, 2002 at 04:30:54PM +0200, Jeroen Dekkers wrote: > > > > First of all this isn't a Debian-specific change but a change in > > > > glibc. Second vmware isn't Debian. Third Debian goes about free > > > > software, vmware isn't. > > > > > > Fourth, we support the use of non-free software, and we provide > > > infrastructure (such as our mailing lists) for non-free software packages. > > > > Vmware isn't even in Debian. This is truely a problem of vmware > > itself. IMHO this isn't something for debian-devel. Or do you want to > > make debian-devel a list where all Debian users can come with their > > problems running buggy non-free software? > > What if they turned out to be caused by bugs in our free software? > Telling them to go away then would be foolish, since we want to know > about bugs, no matter how they were caused. > > Apparently this breakage was caused by a change in glibc. As a general > rule, changes in the C library should not break any software, whether > free or non-free. Sometimes this is not the case (e.g. StarOffice's use > of private glibc symbols a few years ago), but bugs should be > investigated rather than casually dismissed.
Did you *read* the thread? The cause of the problem was already found, it was a vmware bug, vmware already provided patches but not for the version Donald was using. You don't have to tell me how glibc works, I develop it. > > To talk about the social contract, our priorities are free software > > and our users. Somebody is having problems with non-free > > software. What is wrong with telling him that the kind of problems > > he's having is normal with non-free software and say that there are 2 > > free alternatives in Debian which would probably not have those > > problems? > > Because it runs the risk of hiding real problems. > > Given that he'd already tried the free software and found it unusable > for his purposes, it also sounds like you need to pick better times to > advocate free software, or else spend your time improving that software > instead so that you have a better chance of being able to advocate it in > the future. I agree that my reply was not very friendly, I apologized for that. I was actually a bit tired and very busy skimming through all my mails and replying too fast (I know it's not a reason to be unfriendly, but it was the cause). > *That's* what debian-devel is about - a list for improving > the technical quality of Debian. Turning it into advocacy and other > non-technical debates is the very reason why many of our best developers > don't even bother to subscribe to this list any more. I think that's also because of other things, see below. > (In that spirit, please direct non-technical followups to debian-project > or private mail.) (This is for the list in general, not personally to you) And let people just say false things without correcting it? Really, I already wrote a couple of replies telling people that they should read first what I've actually said or what the problem was. Jeroen Dekkers -- Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org IRC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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