On 9/16/22 12:12 AM, Nilesh Patra wrote: > On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 06:17:02PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote: > > To put it in the most brief terms, I come to that conclusion based on what > > many people are telling me: Debian maintainers cannot fix bugs in software > > because they are just volunteers. > > That statement is incorrect. People _can_ and _do_ fix a lot of bugs when > they have time. There are a lot of DDs/DMs/contributors fixing a lot of bugs > on a daily basis > for that matter. You could consider taking a look at -devel-changes ML if > you'd like to. > > > That explains why I almost always am at > > least annoyed by one or two bugs when running Debian software, and sometimes > > after an update the computer is totally unusable until I can debug it and > > find > > the fix, because volunteers don't have the time to do it for me. That is > > what > > most everyone on debian-user is telling me. Do you disagree with what they > > say? > > Well, sometimes bugs do sit around for a bit, yes; but you are presenting it > in > a much way that it makes the situation look worse than it actually is. > The resolution is quick quite a few times (to my > experience and I am a DD myself) but yes, sometimes they do sit around for a > while.
That's easy to explain why your bugs are fixed quickly. You are a DD, so your bugs are important. I am not a DD so my bugs are not as important to the maintainers who have a greater responsibility to respond to a DD's bug than to an unknown user's bug. That is the way it should be. No problem here, and please no one reply and say I am complaining. I am not. I am just seeing how things work at Debian and I think they work fairly well. > > In that case, it is nice to file good bug reports (as Andy told you) and if > you have a > patch, that's even better. You could consider to ping maintainers after a > week or so if > you think it is important. Thanks for the advice. I think a week is way to short. They probably would think I am a nag and a troll if I did that. I usually wait six months and they still ignore the bug sometimes. > And if you think something very critical is broken, you could > even raise the severity of the bug, I don't see a lot of problem with it. > > And yes, sometimes the maintainers of a package _can_ be AFK too, For six months? > this is volunteer work > after all. Someone might be on a vacation, or in a conference, or travelling, > or busy with RL > and seeing your BR on an immediate basis isn't a possibility. > > > Also, in my experience, these bugs and catastrophic failures caused by > > updates > > of a supposedly stable release happened *much* less often when I used > > software > > that is written by paid developers. > > Fine, but what do you propose to do here? Pay all DDs for fixing bugs? Who > will manage the finances/funding? > What if a bug report is critical and someone is unwilling to pay for a fix? > What if someone needs a break for > whatever reason? -- have you considered to give a thought about these? You misunderstand me a bit here. If I wanted to propose the idea of paying Debian volunteers formally, I would have not have done it on debian-user. The comments so far make realize that is not how Debian people want to handle the problem of maintainer burn-out, which seems to be the complaint of some maintainers. > > Also, I'd like to say that calling out Debian contributors with "Hey, you are > doing a horrible job" is > a negative thing for us to hear as well. You said that you got a few negative > replies, which you are annoyed > with, this goes both ways, really. > You failed to notice the messages when I thanked the maintainers when they fixed the bug. Please judge me on the facts, not just the parts you pick out that make me look like a terrible person. IIRC, that would be against the Debian Code of Conduct. Best regards, Chuck