Bug#524787: ITP: unicorn -- Drivers and applications for the Bewan ADSL PCI ST and USB modems
On Wed, Apr 22, 2009 at 03:49:46PM +0200, Cyril Brulebois wrote: Nick Leverton n...@leverton.org (22/04/2009): Thanks for your interest in my IT(re)P and your comments. No problem. Of the stated reasons for removal: | Please remove unicorn: | - mostly unused (2 in popcon for the binary package unicorn) The unicorn binary package contains ancillary utils which are frankly of little use. A better metric for the use of driver packages such as unicorn would be the module source. Unicorn-source scores a not completely moribund 50 users. Alright. I guess the person proposing the removal thought that the tools were some kind of needed to get it working. I'm thinking of renaming the binary package as unicorn-utils for the next upload to make this clearer. It's going to go into NEW anyway. Though with only two popcon users I guess most people have figured it out :) It contains the natty GTK control/status app for the board though which I've done some work on. A better decision on the package's user base could have been gathered by considering all the packages built from unicorn, not just one of them. Sounds fair. Well I've discovered this may not be QA's oversight. For some reason the last upload didn't seem to link unicorn-source .deb to the unicorn source package. Don't know why not as they are both in the .dsc. Yes, it's bad luck that your activity wasn't noticed. No worries. People running unstable should be prepared for packages popping in and out of installability. It's probably quantum ... I guess this package might not have got a serious bug filed against it/wasn't noticed when the first round of gtk1 MBF because it's in non-free? Also, not all packages are trivially portable, quite the opposite from what I've seen. Good luck it only took 2 hours. :) My hubris was too quick, I found some bugs due to the Glade1 templates generating some code which didn't work the same in GTK2. Getting rid of autoconf cruft from the .diff after running autoreconf took a while too :( I think it might be worth adding an X-Debbugs-CC to the $package@ QA address when filing removal with reportbug, and add that step to the process. As you said, since you were monitoring this package, you would have then been notified and had more chance to reply. Good idea. I think that perhaps I should open a bug on the removal process, so that at least removal notices are filed against the actual package, I'll take that topic to debian...@. I wouldn't want to mandate times because circumstances differ and the core teams do a great job anyway without adding constraints. I think a policy of filing a bug on the package would be sufficient notice to interested parties. Doing so with some suitable bug-tag might also help to automate the remainder of the process, thus hopefully not adding to QA's work once the decision had been taken to remove a package as unused/unmaintained. By someone taking ownership of the bug they could declare an interest and forestall the process. However I wouldn't currently have time to learn debbugs and code this myself :) so I would understand if other stuff were more important. Hope I don't sound too legalistic. I think Debian's Developer and QA processes are two of its great strengths and the chief source of its consistently high quality. The prospect of Debian quality control helping us meet engineering standards is the reason I'm pushing Debian at work instead of our existing RH/Fedora lash ups. Anyway as I say, thanks for your interest and your time in responding. I hope I've addressed your comments fairly. No problem. I might nevertheless remove unicorn from m-a's compliant.list (I plan to do some cruft removal in the next upload). You're welcome to open a bug against module-assistant to have it included back once your package reaches the archive (although I'm trying to follow *-source package additions by myself). That'd be fine by me. I've re-packaged it to work with and indeed to build using module-assistant, but I want to make sure the package is great before re-introducing it. The motherboard with the card in seems to be buggy and causing IRQ problems. I need to try it in a different machine to be sure the drivers are OK, before uploading unicorn again. Nick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#524787: ITP: unicorn -- Drivers and applications for the Bewan ADSL PCI ST and USB modems
On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 01:10:26AM +0200, Cyril Brulebois wrote: Nick Leverton n...@leverton.org (19/04/2009): This is really an ITA for the existing unicorn and unicorn-source packages which were somewhat precipitately removed from Debian two weeks ago. Well, I don't call that precipitately: Hi Cyril, Thanks for your interest in my IT(re)P and your comments. RoQA was end of january, fixed 2 months later. I don't call that precipitated. And those reasons look quite good to me Of the stated reasons for removal: | Please remove unicorn: | - mostly unused (2 in popcon for the binary package unicorn) The unicorn binary package contains ancillary utils which are frankly of little use. A better metric for the use of driver packages such as unicorn would be the module source. Unicorn-source scores a not completely moribund 50 users. A better decision on the package's user base could have been gathered by considering all the packages built from unicorn, not just one of them. | - unmaintained (last upload from a year ago) As mentioned in the removal proposal it was very hasty on those grounds alone. There are packages which haven't been uploaded since Etch, are they unmaintained as a result ? | - doesn't build with Lenny kernel I had done considerable work on this following the discussion in #394465 and was preparing an NMU even as the removal was being considered. Just a ping on the bug would have got my attention rather than assuming the package was not being worked on. My NMU was already on Mentors seeking an upload when the package was actually removed. | - not in Lenny Again, not of itself a reason for removal IMO, only if there were no action on it and it was hence unlikely to be in squeeze. Myself and others were working on updating it as seen in #394465 but didn't have time before the freeze. | - depends on legacy libs (GTK 1.2), which will be removed soon Trivial to fix, took me about 2 hours once pointed out. No bug was raised on this issue beforehand; it's a reason for raising a fresh bug with a warning of removal, perhaps, but still not a reason for removal IMO. | - lacks support for important archs like amd64 (#306322) This one is problematical to fix but not a reason for removal IMO as long as there are i386 users who need it (50 according to popcon, placing it almost 10,000 packages from the bottom ranking) My biggest beef with this removal is that no bug was filed against unicorn itself. I have been monitoring the package to see what bugs I could fix in my NMU. Had there been any hint that the above causes for removal were being considered I could have responded and dealt with them. But I think this removal was not even justified according to the stated grounds, and only allowing the last uploader 3 weeks to reply after a ping is perhaps a bit precipitate before deciding they are MIA. I can't speak for him but I certainly had email to him bounce at around that time, apparently due to to Sourceforge mail servers. I think that perhaps I should open a bug on the removal process, so that at least removal notices are filed against the actual package, and due time is given for other interested parties to respond. It is not as if the removal of unicorn was necessary to get a new release out or to enable some blocked transition involving hundreds of other packages. * Package name: unicorn Version : 0.9.3 Upstream Author : Frode Isaksen fisak...@bewan.com * URL : http://www.bewan.com * License : GPL and Proprietary ^^^ What the hell? Oh, that's for non-free, apparently, OK Yep. It's GPL interface code to a closed-source but redistributable binary, like many other bits of non-free. I intend to have another push at the distributor to get the closed-source bit opened, and if they won't then I hope I have sufficient experience to reverse engineer it if the Unicorn driver is still widely used by then. Others may disagree but I think it's more environmentally friendly to re-use old second hand hardware as I am doing, even if non-free when originally sold, rather than to create still more electronic waste. Anyway as I say, thanks for your interest and your time in responding. I hope I've addressed your comments fairly. Nick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#524787: ITP: unicorn -- Drivers and applications for the Bewan ADSL PCI ST and USB modems
Nick Leverton n...@leverton.org (22/04/2009): Thanks for your interest in my IT(re)P and your comments. No problem. Of the stated reasons for removal: | Please remove unicorn: | - mostly unused (2 in popcon for the binary package unicorn) The unicorn binary package contains ancillary utils which are frankly of little use. A better metric for the use of driver packages such as unicorn would be the module source. Unicorn-source scores a not completely moribund 50 users. Alright. I guess the person proposing the removal thought that the tools were some kind of needed to get it working. A better decision on the package's user base could have been gathered by considering all the packages built from unicorn, not just one of them. Sounds fair. | - unmaintained (last upload from a year ago) As mentioned in the removal proposal it was very hasty on those grounds alone. There are packages which haven't been uploaded since Etch, are they unmaintained as a result ? -qa people try and gather clues using different metrics, and that's one of them. Some other packages didn't need upload since them, and hence aren't considered for removal. | - doesn't build with Lenny kernel I had done considerable work on this following the discussion in #394465 and was preparing an NMU even as the removal was being considered. Just a ping on the bug would have got my attention rather than assuming the package was not being worked on. Yes, it's bad luck that your activity wasn't noticed. My NMU was already on Mentors seeking an upload when the package was actually removed. | - not in Lenny Again, not of itself a reason for removal IMO, only if there were no action on it and it was hence unlikely to be in squeeze. Myself and others were working on updating it as seen in #394465 but didn't have time before the freeze. I agree it no longer applies when it comes to integrating it back. | - depends on legacy libs (GTK 1.2), which will be removed soon Trivial to fix, took me about 2 hours once pointed out. No bug was raised on this issue beforehand; it's a reason for raising a fresh bug with a warning of removal, perhaps, but still not a reason for removal IMO. I guess this package might not have got a serious bug filed against it/wasn't noticed when the first round of gtk1 MBF because it's in non-free? Also, not all packages are trivially portable, quite the opposite from what I've seen. Good luck it only took 2 hours. :) | - lacks support for important archs like amd64 (#306322) This one is problematical to fix but not a reason for removal IMO as long as there are i386 users who need it (50 according to popcon, placing it almost 10,000 packages from the bottom ranking) Agreed. My biggest beef with this removal is that no bug was filed against unicorn itself. I have been monitoring the package to see what bugs I could fix in my NMU. Had there been any hint that the above causes for removal were being considered I could have responded and dealt with them. I think it might be worth adding an X-Debbugs-CC to the $package@ QA address when filing removal with reportbug, and add that step to the process. As you said, since you were monitoring this package, you would have then been notified and had more chance to reply. But I think this removal was not even justified according to the stated grounds, and only allowing the last uploader 3 weeks to reply after a ping is perhaps a bit precipitate before deciding they are MIA. I can't speak for him but I certainly had email to him bounce at around that time, apparently due to to Sourceforge mail servers. Do you think the above-proposed step would help in such case? I think that perhaps I should open a bug on the removal process, so that at least removal notices are filed against the actual package, and due time is given for other interested parties to respond. It is not as if the removal of unicorn was necessary to get a new release out or to enable some blocked transition involving hundreds of other packages. I'll take that topic to debian...@. * Package name: unicorn Version : 0.9.3 Upstream Author : Frode Isaksen fisak...@bewan.com * URL : http://www.bewan.com * License : GPL and Proprietary ^^^ What the hell? Oh, that's for non-free, apparently, OK Yep. It's GPL interface code to a closed-source but redistributable binary, like many other bits of non-free. I intend to have another push at the distributor to get the closed-source bit opened, and if they won't then I hope I have sufficient experience to reverse engineer it if the Unicorn driver is still widely used by then. Others may disagree but I think it's more environmentally friendly to re-use old second hand hardware as I am doing, even if non-free when originally sold, rather than to create still more electronic waste.
Bug#524787: ITP: unicorn -- Drivers and applications for the Bewan ADSL PCI ST and USB modems
Package: wnpp Severity: wishlist Owner: Nick Leverton n...@leverton.org This is really an ITA for the existing unicorn and unicorn-source packages which were somewhat precipitately removed from Debian two weeks ago. * Package name: unicorn Version : 0.9.3 Upstream Author : Frode Isaksen fisak...@bewan.com * URL : http://www.bewan.com * License : GPL and Proprietary Programming Lang: C Description : Kernel drivers and applications for the Bewan ADSL PCI ST and USB modems Unicorn package provides the source code for the unicorn kernel modules and applications that can be useful to monitor the state of the Bewan ADSL modems. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-bugs-dist-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
Bug#524787: ITP: unicorn -- Drivers and applications for the Bewan ADSL PCI ST and USB modems
Nick Leverton n...@leverton.org (19/04/2009): This is really an ITA for the existing unicorn and unicorn-source packages which were somewhat precipitately removed from Debian two weeks ago. Well, I don't call that “precipitately”: | Please remove unicorn: | - mostly unused (2 in popcon for the binary package unicorn) | - unmaintained (last upload from a year ago) | - doesn't build with Lenny kernel | - not in Lenny | - depends on legacy libs (GTK 1.2), which will be removed soon | - lacks support for important archs like amd64 (#306322) RoQA was end of january, fixed 2 months later. I don't call that “precipitated”. And those reasons look quite good to me… * Package name: unicorn Version : 0.9.3 Upstream Author : Frode Isaksen fisak...@bewan.com * URL : http://www.bewan.com * License : GPL and Proprietary ^^^ What the hell? Oh, that's for non-free, apparently, OK… Mraw, KiBi. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
