2012/2/20 Michael Scherer <m...@zarb.org>: > Le dimanche 19 février 2012 à 12:19 +0000, Païou a écrit : >> Oliver Burger <oliver.bgr@...> writes: >> >> > I don't see the reason for this answer. >> > Michael is just trying to make sure, we don't have a unmaintained major DE. >> > Now, some maybe a bit harsh words on the developer mailing list - this >> > is no user support list or forum or whatever - are far better, then >> > having something like xfce unmaintained. >> > After all, what makes users run away: some not all that courteous mails >> > on the -dev ml, whose existence they may or may not be aware of or a >> > perhaps buggy, not updated, unmaintained desktop? >> > And if we keep a whole DE unmaintained in the repos, what does that say >> > about overall package quality? >> > >> > Oliver >> > >> > >> OK, you are right. Sorry. >> I wish ardently that Xfce remains maintained. > > I guess lots of people do. But history shown this is not enough. > > Let's suppose we keep xfce, despites being unmaintained. When people > report bugs, they will have no or few answers. They will not like and > complain. Maybe more than with a maintainer, maybe they will not care. > > When there will be bugs, no one will step to fix them. So people who try > this will either say "this DE is buggy", or "this distribution is > buggy". > Then, likely sooner or later, someone will say "the DE work fine on > AnotherDistribution", so people will think "the distribution is buggy" > and switch to AnotherDistribution. > > While the outcome look the same ( ie, people leaving because there is no > package, or leaving because it is not working ), in one case, they will > switch by thinking "the distribution is not having what I want, but the > rest was working" and will not badmouth us. In the other case, they will > think "the distribution is buggy", and complain. > > So how ending like this would help us in the long run ? > > Maybe that's just me, but each time I mentioned "I am doing package for > Mandriva" in the past 5 years, people kept explaining me that they faced > some bug dating back to mandrake 7.0 time, and that they switched > distributions and how they now live in a world filled with pink pony > giving them candy, yadayadayada. Besides being demotivating for me > ( cause my time travel machine is still not working ), this was hurting > the promotion of Mandriva. > > Did someone ever heard "fedora is bad because they didn't ship Xfce at > the start". I never did, and I think everybody forgot it. I could surely > give several example on all distribution of missing packages and people > forgetting once the issue is fixed. > > So people are likely quicker to forget lack of packages than lack of > quality. > > And if we do not have the ressources to achieve quality packages, then > it is much more saner for us to choose the least damaging solution in > the long term, ie removing packages. > > There was enough complains about Mandriva shipping buggy softwares, and > if as a community, we cannot increase work done to fix this ( we tried, > we even put 2 developers together to see if they mate and produce a 3rd > one to help us ), we do not have much others choice. > >> For my part I participate in it as tester, >> where from my a little bit virulent reaction. >> >> This place is also, I think, the only place where it is possible >> to have a dialogue with developers. >> (except bugzilla, but bugzilla is more specific) > > There is lots of place to have a dialogue, be it on irc, in real life > and so on. And if some of us ( and me the first ) do not go on forums on > a frequent basis, there is various reasons that were already explained > in the past > ( http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.mandrake.cooker.devel/305365 ), > so I can only direct you to my previous answers as it is likely still > valid ( at least for me ).
>From time to time we do have different opinions especially wrt user's POV vs. devel's POV, but this time I agree in full to all points you made. -- wobo