Re: long-standing bugs and tar pits (was: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?)

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 10:57:16AM -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote:

As a person of gray Debian beard (but of sufficiently low profile to
have been forgotten about as a developer)


You can't escape :P It's nice to see names that used to be a big part of
the "face" of Debian, such as yourself, pop up from time to time, so we
can know that you are still around. I hope life is treating you well.


--
Please do not CC me for listmail.

👱🏻  Jonathan Dowland
✎j...@debian.org
🔗   https://jmtd.net

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Michael Stone]

On Sat, Sep 17, 2022 at 11:12:54AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:

On Fri, 2022-09-16 at 10:13 -0400, Michael Stone wrote:

Most people running interactive VMs (e.g., on a desktop with a
graphical console) aren't using Xen, they're using kvm or virtualbox
or just about anything else.


While the number is probably less, some people (including Debian
contributors) are using Qubes (which is based on Xen) on desktops:

https://www.qubes-os.org/


*I* use qubes, as well as xen on its own, which is why I'm fairly 
comfortable asserting that bullseye works just fine for typical use 
cases on both platforms. I haven't taken any particular measures to work 
around the bug under discussion--it's just never come up. In qubes you 
aren't generally working with a virtualized bare metal system (i.e., 
watching a bios boot screen come up on a virtual monitor after booting 
from an iso), you're interacting with a templated thin vm via 
qubes-specific I/O channels. The underlying tech may be xen, but the way 
it is used is different.


(Conversely, when I do want that "boot a virtual bare metal system from 
an ISO" experience I do so on a different computer, currently via KVM 
and previously via virtualbox or vmware.)

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Paul Wise]

On Fri, 2022-09-16 at 10:13 -0400, Michael Stone wrote:

> Most people running interactive VMs (e.g., on a desktop with a
> graphical console) aren't using Xen, they're using kvm or virtualbox
> or just about anything else.

While the number is probably less, some people (including Debian
contributors) are using Qubes (which is based on Xen) on desktops:

https://www.qubes-os.org/

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: Fwd: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Paul Wise]

On Fri, 2022-09-16 at 20:58 +0200, Steffen Moeller wrote:
> 
> Am 16.09.2022 um 15:36 schrieb Andrey Rahmatullin:
> > On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:56:12AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > > > Russ does have point though in that if you don't like something in
> > > > Debian, there are really only two things you can do to fix that
> > > > situation for yourself:
> > > > 
> > > > - Get involved as a contributor, and help out fixing the problems that
> > > >    exist
> > > > - Stop using Debian, and use something else.
> > > Are those the only two possible ways to respond to the current
> > > situation at Debian?
> > As quoted above, those are he only two possible ways to *fix* the current
> > situation.
> 
> https://www.debian.org/partners/ comes to mind. These are organisations
> that somehow help Debian to become a better place and that can be
> somewhat directed (typically with money) to solve problems or to change
> something. At least that is how I read it.

Debian Partners typically provide resources to Debian rather than
working on Debian, although there are some development partners, but
they are usually directed by their own priorities rather than money.

The list of Debian consultants is what you should peruse if you want to
pay someone to work on Debian. For situations where you want to an
employer instead of consulting relationship, there is debian-jobs.

https://www.debian.org/consultants/
https://lists.debian.org/debian-jobs/

The FOSSjobs folks have a list of other FOSS job aggregator sites too.

https://github.com/fossjobs/fossjobs/wiki/resources#job-aggregators

-- 
bye,
pabs

https://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise


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Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[The Wanderer]

On 2022-09-16 at 16:03, Diederik de Haas wrote:

> On Friday, 16 September 2022 20:41:33 CEST Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:

 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=983357#97
 
 I don't think I can sign-off on a patch written by Ben
 Hutchings.
> 
> You shouldn't use a Signed-Off 'tag' without someone explicit
> permission. You can send the exact same patch with only your
> Signed-Off tag (required for patches submitted to the Linux kernel)
> though ...

It's been quite a few years, but last I remember seeing this discussed
on the LKML, I think the upshot of that discussion was that
Signed-off-by: for kernel patches is intended to indicate that the
indicated person (who should be the same person adding the tag) is
certifying that the code being submitted is licensed in such a way that
it would not conflict with the license terms that cover the Linux kernel.

In practice I think it tends to be used for other purposes (instead or
as well), but I believe I've seen it stated that that's the core intent
of the tag.

If that's not correct, I'd be glad to be corrected on that front and
learn what the intent and scope of that tag actually are, but it's been
my understanding for - as I said - quite a few years now.

-- 
   The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw



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Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Diederik de Haas]

On Friday, 16 September 2022 20:41:33 CEST Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > > The patch is written by Ben Hutchings, a kernel developer.

Anyone can send a patch for inclusion in the upstream kernel:
https://lore.kernel.org/all/20220629224938.7760-1-didi.deb...@cknow.org/

IOW: you don't need to have some special 'role' to do it.

> > > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=983357#97
> > > 
> > > I don't think I can sign-off on a patch written by Ben Hutchings.

You shouldn't use a Signed-Off 'tag' without someone explicit permission.
You can send the exact same patch with only your Signed-Off tag (required for
patches submitted to the Linux kernel) though ...

> As you can see from the Ben's message, the only question is
> whether the buffer should be increased to 4k or 8k. I tested
> and 4k was big enough for the Xen virtual keyboard, but Ben
> also though that the "correct" value to increase it to might
> be 8k, which matches a buffer size in udev. So we should work
> out that question before submitting upstream, don't you think?

What you can do instead of sending a formal patch is send a normal email
to the persons/lists I mentioned earlier with a *short* description of the
problem (with a link to the bug report) and ask the upstream maintainers
what to do about the problem and whether the limit should be increased 
(in their opinion) to 4k or 8k and whether they think it should be done
at all in that particular source file or whether a different approach should
be pursued and which that is.

If the patch was (really) substantial and written by someone else (Ben),
then it's (way) better form to ask for permission to send it upstream.
In this case, it's only a tiny change (1 'word'), so 'stealing' his patch
should be fine :-)

> > > Please explain why you are asking *me* to do that.

In a do-ocracy, *someone* needs to do it and it may as well be you.

You are also well suited to verify whether a change to 8k would also produce
the desired fix or an alternative fix if the upstream maintainers would
prefer that.


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Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Michael Stone]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 01:54:09PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:

On 9/16/22 10:13 AM, Michael Stone wrote:

You have now sent a message about a particular udev issue to debian-user
and I replied with one immediate thought. Some more thoughts: you're
using a fairly obscure configuration.


I thought Debian was free and I can use it that way if I want
to, and that is how I understand Debian's philosophy of free
software. Do you understand it differently?


unbelievable

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/16/22 2:10 PM, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> On 9/16/22 2:00 PM, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > On 9/16/22 1:27 PM, Diederik de Haas wrote:
> > > On Friday, 16 September 2022 16:37:50 CEST Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > > > the Linux kernel accept a patch to fix Debian #983357
> > >
> > > Has the patch every been proposed to upstream?
> >
> > The patch is written by Ben Hutchings, a kernel developer.
> >
> > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=983357#97
> >
> > I don't think I can sign-off on a patch written by Ben Hutchings.
> > Please explain why you are asking *me* to do that.
>
> I have pinged the bug, and therefore Ben Hutchings, politely,
> but he hasn't responded, and I don't think it would be wise to
> do this without his consent. Perhaps you can ask for his consent.
> If he gives it, I will do the git-send-email to the kernel.
>
> I am not going to ask him. I have already done so on BTS
> with polite pings. Maybe he will listen to you if you ask him.
> You are a member of the Debian Xen Team. As you can
> see from other messages on this list, I am suspect and
> unwelcome by not a few people who hang out on this list,
> so obviously I am not the best person to ask Ben for
> permission to submit his patch to upstream Linux.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Chuck
>
> >
> >
> > Best regards,
> >
> >
> > Chuck
> >
> > > If not, then send one with 'git send-email' to the ones listed for the 
> > > file in 
> > > question, which can be obtained via 'get_maintainer.pl':
> > >
> > > $~/dev/kernel.org/linux$ scripts/get_maintainer.pl include/linux/kobject.h
> > > Greg Kroah-Hartman  (supporter:DRIVER CORE, 
> > > KOBJECTS, DEBUGFS AND SYSFS)
> > > "Rafael J. Wysocki"  (reviewer:DRIVER CORE, KOBJECTS, 
> > > DEBUGFS AND SYSFS)
> > > linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org (open list)
> > >
> > > If you've never used 'git send-email' before or send patches to the 
> > > upstream 
> > > kernel before, these links may be off help:
> > > https://git-send-email.io/
> > > https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/submitting-patches.html
> > >
> > > HTH
> >
>

Hi Diederik,

As you can see from the Ben's message, the only question is
whether the buffer should be increased to 4k or 8k. I tested
and 4k was big enough for the Xen virtual keyboard, but Ben
also though that the "correct" value to increase it to might
be 8k, which matches a buffer size in udev. So we should work
out that question before submitting upstream, don't you think?

Best regards,

Chuck

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/16/22 9:40 AM, Tobias Frost wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:47:19AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Please stop with your passive-aggressive rhethoric.
> Claiming that we don't care about equally our users is … inappropiate and 
> greatly insulting
> to the contributors (regardless of their status in the project).
>
> You need to stop that. Right now.
>
>  
> > >
> > > 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?
>
> Even if it six years, a maintainer has absolutly the right to ignore any 
> report,
> be it mine, the DPLs, from someone else or yours. Remeber, unless you pay 
> them,
> they do not owe you anything.

Let me see if I understand. I read in the Debian documents that Debian
has no BDFL, no central authority. Yet every package maintainer can become
a BDFL? If that's true, then that Debian is a collection of thousands of
BDFLs, given that there are thousands of packages to be maintained.
Like medieval Europe, a bunch of little warlords fighting off bad guys.
The only problem, sometimes those little warlords, in their mistaken
zeal, kill off some good guys.

But I do not think the analogy of a bunch of little warlords fighting off bad
guys accurately describes Debian, but that is what Debian could become
if that type of thinking holds.

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/16/22 9:42 AM, Nilesh Patra wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:47:19AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > On 9/16/22 12:12 AM, Nilesh Patra wrote:
> > > 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's a completely wrong interpretation that you are drawing here. No, that's
> not really the reason here.
> The reason is rather that people _do_ work on bug reports regardless of
> who reported them, but you somehow do not want to acknowledge the fact that
> package maintainers do work on bug reports.
>
> > That is the way it should be.
>
> No, that should not be that way, it'd be _very_ wrong. If that was actually 
> the
> case we would be violating the debian social contract point 4
>
>   "Our priorities are our users and free software"
>
> > 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.
>
> You are seeing it in completely incorrect ways.
>
> ...
>
> FWIW, even my bug reports have been lying to take actions for long times, so
> it is not just you.

What severity are they? The one I am talking about is marked
as important, I did not report it nor did I mark it as important,
but a kernel maintainer marked it as important. I want to help
close it, and some here seem to say I can help fix it, but others,
like you, do not want me to help fix it.

Best regards,

Chuck

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/16/22 10:13 AM, Michael Stone wrote:
> You have now sent a message about a particular udev issue to debian-user 
> and I replied with one immediate thought. Some more thoughts: you're 
> using a fairly obscure configuration. 

I thought Debian was free and I can use it that way if I want
to, and that is how I understand Debian's philosophy of free
software. Do you understand it differently?

Best regards,

Chuck

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/16/22 1:27 PM, Diederik de Haas wrote:
> On Friday, 16 September 2022 16:37:50 CEST Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > the Linux kernel accept a patch to fix Debian #983357
>
> Has the patch every been proposed to upstream?

The patch is written by Ben Hutchings, a kernel developer.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=983357#97

I don't think I can sign-off on a patch written by Ben Hutchings.
Please explain why you are asking *me* to do that.


Best regards,


Chuck

> If not, then send one with 'git send-email' to the ones listed for the file 
> in 
> question, which can be obtained via 'get_maintainer.pl':
>
> $~/dev/kernel.org/linux$ scripts/get_maintainer.pl include/linux/kobject.h
> Greg Kroah-Hartman  (supporter:DRIVER CORE, 
> KOBJECTS, DEBUGFS AND SYSFS)
> "Rafael J. Wysocki"  (reviewer:DRIVER CORE, KOBJECTS, 
> DEBUGFS AND SYSFS)
> linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org (open list)
>
> If you've never used 'git send-email' before or send patches to the upstream 
> kernel before, these links may be off help:
> https://git-send-email.io/
> https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/submitting-patches.html
>
> HTH

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/16/22 2:00 PM, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> On 9/16/22 1:27 PM, Diederik de Haas wrote:
> > On Friday, 16 September 2022 16:37:50 CEST Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > > the Linux kernel accept a patch to fix Debian #983357
> >
> > Has the patch every been proposed to upstream?
>
> The patch is written by Ben Hutchings, a kernel developer.
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=983357#97
>
> I don't think I can sign-off on a patch written by Ben Hutchings.
> Please explain why you are asking *me* to do that.

I have pinged the bug, and therefore Ben Hutchings, politely,
but he hasn't responded, and I don't think it would be wise to
do this without his consent. Perhaps you can ask for his consent.
If he gives it, I will do the git-send-email to the kernel.

I am not going to ask him. I have already done so on BTS
with polite pings. Maybe he will listen to you if you ask him.
You are a member of the Debian Xen Team. As you can
see from other messages on this list, I am suspect and
unwelcome by not a few people who hang out on this list,
so obviously I am not the best person to ask Ben for
permission to submit his patch to upstream Linux.

Best regards,

Chuck

>
>
> Best regards,
>
>
> Chuck
>
> > If not, then send one with 'git send-email' to the ones listed for the file 
> > in 
> > question, which can be obtained via 'get_maintainer.pl':
> >
> > $~/dev/kernel.org/linux$ scripts/get_maintainer.pl include/linux/kobject.h
> > Greg Kroah-Hartman  (supporter:DRIVER CORE, 
> > KOBJECTS, DEBUGFS AND SYSFS)
> > "Rafael J. Wysocki"  (reviewer:DRIVER CORE, KOBJECTS, 
> > DEBUGFS AND SYSFS)
> > linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org (open list)
> >
> > If you've never used 'git send-email' before or send patches to the 
> > upstream 
> > kernel before, these links may be off help:
> > https://git-send-email.io/
> > https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/submitting-patches.html
> >
> > HTH
>

Re: Fwd: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Steffen Moeller]

Am 16.09.2022 um 15:36 schrieb Andrey Rahmatullin:

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:56:12AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:

Russ does have point though in that if you don't like something in
Debian, there are really only two things you can do to fix that
situation for yourself:

- Get involved as a contributor, and help out fixing the problems that
   exist
- Stop using Debian, and use something else.

Are those the only two possible ways to respond to the current
situation at Debian?

As quoted above, those are he only two possible ways to *fix* the current
situation.


https://www.debian.org/partners/ comes to mind. These are organisations
that somehow help Debian to become a better place and that can be
somewhat directed (typically with money) to solve problems or to change
something. At least that is how I read it.

Best,
Steffen

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Diederik de Haas]

On Friday, 16 September 2022 16:37:50 CEST Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> the Linux kernel accept a patch to fix Debian #983357

Has the patch every been proposed to upstream?
If not, then send one with 'git send-email' to the ones listed for the file in 
question, which can be obtained via 'get_maintainer.pl':

$~/dev/kernel.org/linux$ scripts/get_maintainer.pl include/linux/kobject.h
Greg Kroah-Hartman  (supporter:DRIVER CORE, 
KOBJECTS, DEBUGFS AND SYSFS)
"Rafael J. Wysocki"  (reviewer:DRIVER CORE, KOBJECTS, 
DEBUGFS AND SYSFS)
linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org (open list)

If you've never used 'git send-email' before or send patches to the upstream 
kernel before, these links may be off help:
https://git-send-email.io/
https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/submitting-patches.html

HTH

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Re: long-standing bugs and tar pits (was: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?)

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/16/22 11:57 AM, G. Branden Robinson wrote:
> At 2022-09-16T19:12:40+0530, Nilesh Patra wrote:
> > On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:47:19AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > > 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's a completely wrong interpretation that you are drawing here.
> > No, that's not really the reason here.  The reason is rather that
> > people _do_ work on bug reports regardless of who reported them, but
> > you somehow do not want to acknowledge the fact that package
> > maintainers do work on bug reports.
>
> As a person of gray Debian beard (but of sufficiently low profile to
> have been forgotten about as a developer), I encourage diligent
> volunteers to _not engage_ with people who, whether intentionally or
> not, seem determined to increase the amount of friction in processes and
> to make themselves into tar pits for anyone who attempts to engage with
> them constructively.

I don't know how many people here understand what you are
saying here, but I do. Although I do not have a grey beard I
certainly am old enough to have one LOL!

>
> That said, such people define "constructively" in an odd way, as can be
> seen above; they assert that the only way they experience respect is to
> be _obeyed_.  They claim that they are treated as second-class citizens
> because they are not deferred to like monarchs--or dictators.  I advise
> people to be watchful for this pattern because you can be sucked into an
> energy-sapping dynamic that reduces your channel capacity as a volunteer
> and dilutes your enjoyment of (what should be) a collaborative
> environment.
>
> I think we can take substantial value from basic game-theoretic models
> of behavior: if a person defects more than they cooperate, don't play
> with them.  We should ask ourselves, what does Chuck Zmudzinski
> contribute to raising Debian's barn?[1]  The answer isn't necessarily
> "nothing"; maybe it's "application of an angle grinder to the base of an
> erect load-bearing post".

I think that is a nice analogy of what I am trying to do. But there
are also those who think Chuck Zmudzinski is an idiot and does
not know how to do it the way Debian people want their barn to
be raised.

>
> Bugs can take a long time to get fixed and sometimes you have to do it
> yourself.  For your amusement and as a case in point I refer the reader
> to one I had forgotten about for many years.
>
>   https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=243238
>
> Among other things, Debian is a software engineering organization.  We
> can benefit ourselves and our community by becoming better software
> engineers.  And indulging in "simple sabotage" of production less.[2]
>
> I would emphasize that the list in that oft-cited resource is not an
> enumeration of activities that must be avoided at all costs in all
> circumstances.  I find it useful instead as a diagnostic tool in the DSM
> sense; for example, if you find a person doing at least two of these 16
> things at least once in every meeting (or some applicable time
> interval), then they may be functioning as a drag on production--even if
> they see themselves as heroically frustrating the rolling Panzers of the
> wicked Axis power that is the Debian Project.  The obvious defects of
> the most vilified regimes of the 20th century were that they had too
> much anarchism, too much democracy, and left too much to individual
> initiative.  Imagine the tragedies that could have been averted if
> they'd had a BDFL like Chuck Zmudzinski.

LOL

>
> Regards,
> Branden
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_raising
> [2] https://www.businessinsider.com/oss-manual-sabotage-productivity-2015-11

long-standing bugs and tar pits (was: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?)

[G. Branden Robinson]

At 2022-09-16T19:12:40+0530, Nilesh Patra wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:47:19AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > 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's a completely wrong interpretation that you are drawing here.
> No, that's not really the reason here.  The reason is rather that
> people _do_ work on bug reports regardless of who reported them, but
> you somehow do not want to acknowledge the fact that package
> maintainers do work on bug reports.

As a person of gray Debian beard (but of sufficiently low profile to
have been forgotten about as a developer), I encourage diligent
volunteers to _not engage_ with people who, whether intentionally or
not, seem determined to increase the amount of friction in processes and
to make themselves into tar pits for anyone who attempts to engage with
them constructively.

That said, such people define "constructively" in an odd way, as can be
seen above; they assert that the only way they experience respect is to
be _obeyed_.  They claim that they are treated as second-class citizens
because they are not deferred to like monarchs--or dictators.  I advise
people to be watchful for this pattern because you can be sucked into an
energy-sapping dynamic that reduces your channel capacity as a volunteer
and dilutes your enjoyment of (what should be) a collaborative
environment.

I think we can take substantial value from basic game-theoretic models
of behavior: if a person defects more than they cooperate, don't play
with them.  We should ask ourselves, what does Chuck Zmudzinski
contribute to raising Debian's barn?[1]  The answer isn't necessarily
"nothing"; maybe it's "application of an angle grinder to the base of an
erect load-bearing post".

Bugs can take a long time to get fixed and sometimes you have to do it
yourself.  For your amusement and as a case in point I refer the reader
to one I had forgotten about for many years.

  https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=243238

Among other things, Debian is a software engineering organization.  We
can benefit ourselves and our community by becoming better software
engineers.  And indulging in "simple sabotage" of production less.[2]

I would emphasize that the list in that oft-cited resource is not an
enumeration of activities that must be avoided at all costs in all
circumstances.  I find it useful instead as a diagnostic tool in the DSM
sense; for example, if you find a person doing at least two of these 16
things at least once in every meeting (or some applicable time
interval), then they may be functioning as a drag on production--even if
they see themselves as heroically frustrating the rolling Panzers of the
wicked Axis power that is the Debian Project.  The obvious defects of
the most vilified regimes of the 20th century were that they had too
much anarchism, too much democracy, and left too much to individual
initiative.  Imagine the tragedies that could have been averted if
they'd had a BDFL like Chuck Zmudzinski.

Regards,
Branden

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_raising
[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/oss-manual-sabotage-productivity-2015-11


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Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/16/22 9:23 AM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:47:19AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > On 9/16/22 12:12 AM, Nilesh Patra wrote:
> >>
> > > On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 06:17:02PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > 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.
> > 
> Hi Chuck,
>
> *Just because you're a DD* is not a priority call for bugs.

Thanks for clarifying. I think I have that idea because of what so
many people are saying on debian-user. I have to remember to
take time and spend it on other places than debian-user because
what the "experts" over their say is not necessarily accurate. Be
patient with me, it will take me some time to learn the Debian
processes. I have to say that practically speaking, the maintainer
does need to take into account *who* reports a bug.

> At least one
> of the bugs you reference is for Xen and seems to have bounced between
> Debian and kernel devs. and still, perhaps, not to be fixed, for example.
>
> Xen is a much lower priority than it used to be when it was the first
> hypervisor in common use. There are fewer maintainers _anywhere_ with
> deep knowledge of Xen. If the bug with Xen keyboard doesnt' get fixed
> quickly in Debian, it may be bacause there isn't a maintainer / there
> are other higher priority bugs / it genuinely should be fixed upstream.
>
> If you know a fix - you can talk to the Xen maintainer in Debian, you could 
> submit a patch, you could ask them if they want to work with you to see
> it fixed. If they say it's a wishlist bug / they have higher priorities on
> their tiem - you can still help.
>
> You can politely ask the Linux kernel maintainers similarly. You can ask the
> Linux Foundation at xenproject.org if the bug is still there in their version.
> It's a "do-ocracy" that may rely on you to chase.
>
> I reiterate my suggestion to you to go and read list archives / documentation
> / the Codes of Conduct to get a better picture of who you are asking, what
> you are asking for and generally "How Debian works". Long messages to 
> debian-user and debian-project may not help here as an initial approach.

Again, I beg to disagree. The bug is important, and maintainers have
ignored it for over a year. It was not my initial approach to send long
messages to debian-user and debian-project. Debian is such a large
project polite pings are often ignored. It is over a year and a half since
the bug was reported and over six months since any maintainer has
indicated any work is being done to fix it.

Debian processes: AFAIK there is no process for a user to resort to when
an important bug has been ignored for over a year except to make some
noise on mailing lists like debian-user and debian-project. What would
you suggest as a better process to handle cases like #983357?

Best regards,

Chuck

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/16/22 9:23 AM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:47:19AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > On 9/16/22 12:12 AM, Nilesh Patra wrote:
> >>
> > > On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 06:17:02PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > 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.
> > 
> Hi Chuck,
>
> *Just because you're a DD* is not a priority call for bugs. At least one
> of the bugs you reference is for Xen and seems to have bounced between
> Debian and kernel devs. and still, perhaps, not to be fixed, for example.
>
> Xen is a much lower priority than it used to be when it was the first
> hypervisor in common use. There are fewer maintainers _anywhere_ with
> deep knowledge of Xen. If the bug with Xen keyboard doesnt' get fixed
> quickly in Debian, it may be bacause there isn't a maintainer / there
> are other higher priority bugs / it genuinely should be fixed upstream.
>
> If you know a fix - you can talk to the Xen maintainer in Debian, you could 
> submit a patch, you could ask them if they want to work with you to see
> it fixed. If they say it's a wishlist bug / they have higher priorities on
> their tiem - you can still help.

Ben Hutchings marked it important over a year ago, and that is it's
severity today.

>
> You can politely ask the Linux kernel maintainers similarly. You can ask the
> Linux Foundation at xenproject.org if the bug is still there in their version.
> It's a "do-ocracy" that may rely on you to chase.

I have done polite pings. If you say there is more I can do, I beg to
disagree. I can think of many ways to fix the bug. It could be done
by Xen upstream by patching the driver. It could be done in systemd/udev
configuration files. It could be done by increasing the size of a buffer
in the kernel. I don't know what the best way to do it is. I need feedback
from those who do, but they will not give me any. I am willing to help.

If the Xen upstream people want to patch the device driver that is causing
the trouble, I would be willing to help with that. For that, I would need to
contact Xen upstream, not the Debian Xen Team unless I can convince the
Debian Xen Team to ask the Xen upstream developers to try to fix it.
I actually think that is the best answer, and you make a good point
about Xen upstream, it really is struggling these days and I do not think
that bug is going to be a priority for them. Although the bug is
with a Xen virtual device driver, the upstream project that needs to
patch it is the Linux kernel.

Andrew, could you ask the Debian Xen Team if they would be willing
to support Ben Hutchings' request that the Linux kernel accept a patch to
fix Debian #983357? I am willing to do testing and even suggest
perhaps an RFC patch to the Linux kernel of the buggy driver if the
Linux kernel for some reason cannot accept the patch Ben Hutchings
proposed which increases the size of a buffer in the kernel. The reason
I ask you to do it is because I doubt the Debian Xen Team will listen to
me. But they might listen to you.

Best regards,

Chuck

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Michael Stone]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 06:37:03AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:

The difficult cost of trying to have a voice as a Debian user is *not* the 
commitment, it
is enduring the ad hominem attacks when I express my opinion. Of course if I 
cannot
overcome the stigma of the ad hominem attacks, my voice is completely nullified
by those ad hominem attacks. And they continue. Michael Stone followed me to
this list and condemned for me asking questions here on this list. There is no 
way
*he* considers me a member of the Debian community who has a formal voice as
a Debian user. 


Since you've been complaining about how people react to your messages 
for quite some time, perhaps you might change the way you write your 
messages?


https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=994899#5

When people give you negative feedback, you announce that they are 
"attacking" or "defaming" you.


https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2021/09/msg00785.html

And the pattern continues with new messages periodically complaining
about debian, followed by "oh, I understand now" type messages, then the
same complaints get recycled again later.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2022/08/msg00370.html

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2022/09/msg00267.html

There are a lot of walls of text that just don't seem to ever lead
anywhere. In the message I'm replying to you wrote 90+ lines, took the 
time to call me out for "attacking" you, asked some rhetorical 
questions, but never explained a particular problem that debian might be 
able to address. You want other people to read volumes but show no sign 
of changing based on the feedback you get, repeatedly complaining about 
'bugs not being fixed' without mentioning what bugs so people could 
actually engage with you on why a particular bug might not have been 
fixed. (You did it yet again in the message I'm replying to--after 
specifically stating at the start of this thread that your last thread 
on the topic degenerated so you were going to switch lists and focus on 
something different!) I can't see how we can possibly improve your 
experience with debian until you stop the long meta-discussions about 
vague concerns and find a way to clearly communicate what problems we 
might help you to fix. If you want better results, keep your 
communications direct and actionable.


In fact, this is basically what you were told a year ago in one of the 
threads where you complained that you were being attacked:


https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=994899#10

"You've filed a new bug so make the exact problem the primary part of 
this bug. Don't ask of others to read a '50 page document' and expect 
them to distill YOUR problem themselves. Doing a copy+paste of the 
*relevant* part is absolutely fine."


You have now sent a message about a particular udev issue to debian-user 
and I replied with one immediate thought. Some more thoughts: you're 
using a fairly obscure configuration. Most people running interactive 
VMs (e.g., on a desktop with a graphical console) aren't using Xen, 
they're using kvm or virtualbox or just about anything else. People 
running Xen are much more likely to use something like debootstrap 
rather than going through an installer. So the number of people who 1) 
can duplicate the problem and 2) are likely to do so, is pretty small. 
The reality is that this will affect how much attention the problem 
gets. As mentioned several times, by several people, you have a tendancy 
to write enormous volumes of text. Just reading the logs of the bugs 
associated with your issue was exhausting. There are no concise 
summaries, there are no small patches to help identify/isolate an issue. 
(There is, for example, a 1700 line patch in 994899 which basically 
reverts an entire set of functionality; maintainers generally prefer 
minimal and well understood changes. The eventual fix from upstream 
corrected several issues but didn't rip out all the associated 
functionality to do so.) It's not enough to say that something like that 
fixes a problem for you, unless it's clear what the effect would be on 
the set of people whose systems are currently working but who might be 
negatively affected by the change. For your udev problem I would 
probably focus on why the runtime behavior is different than the 
installer behavior, and try to make the installer behave like the 
runtime. (Runtime doesn't require kernel patches, etc., so it seems 
unlikely those are necessary to fix the problem.) If you can isolate 
that to something you can express clearly and produce a patch to correct 
you'll probably get a positive response. If you continue to send massive 
volumes of roundabout reports, then complain that you aren't getting 
enough attention, it's much less likely that anyone will choose to spend 
time working with you on this.

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Nilesh Patra]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:47:19AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> On 9/16/22 12:12 AM, Nilesh Patra wrote:
> > 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's a completely wrong interpretation that you are drawing here. No, that's
not really the reason here.
The reason is rather that people _do_ work on bug reports regardless of
who reported them, but you somehow do not want to acknowledge the fact that
package maintainers do work on bug reports.

> That is the way it should be.

No, that should not be that way, it'd be _very_ wrong. If that was actually the
case we would be violating the debian social contract point 4

"Our priorities are our users and free software"

> 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.

You are seeing it in completely incorrect ways.

> > 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?

Yes?
What if a package maintainer runs into a medical emergency, or some family? Or 
someone
is into completing their PhD, let's say?

Aren't we humans after all?

FWIW, even my bug reports have been lying to take actions for long times, so
it is not just you.

> > 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.

What was your idea then? What solution do you intend to propose for:

"""
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.
"""

> > 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.

And maybe you failed to notice that the statements you made on this thread and 
also
on debian-user are negative statements, and just saying a thanks does not make 
it all good again.
Please judge procedures in debian on the facts,
not just the bug reports you pick out to make us look like terrible volunteers.

At this point, you need to make peace with the fact that you don't get to order
people into doing something for you.
I'll not engage on this thread anymore, I am so done.

-- 
Best,
Nilesh


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Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Tobias Frost]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:47:19AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> 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.

Please stop with your passive-aggressive rhethoric.
Claiming that we don't care about equally our users is … inappropiate and 
greatly insulting
to the contributors (regardless of their status in the project).

You need to stop that. Right now.

 
> >
> > 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?

Even if it six years, a maintainer has absolutly the right to ignore any report,
be it mine, the DPLs, from someone else or yours. Remeber, unless you pay them,
they do not owe you anything.

The feedback given to you that they way you interacted with the project needs to
improve, but your reaction was *not* to consider this input but to feel 
insulted instead.

Then you escalated to -user, and as this dis not yield the result you wanted,
you finally escalate to -project, and people are trying hard to explain here
that there is some inappropiateness in your way of interacting with the project.

-- 
tobi

Re: Fwd: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Andrey Rahmatullin]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:56:12AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > Russ does have point though in that if you don't like something in
> > Debian, there are really only two things you can do to fix that
> > situation for yourself:
> >
> > - Get involved as a contributor, and help out fixing the problems that
> >   exist
> > - Stop using Debian, and use something else.
> 
> Are those the only two possible ways to respond to the current
> situation at Debian? 
As quoted above, those are he only two possible ways to *fix* the current
situation.

-- 
WBR, wRAR


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Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 08:47:19AM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> On 9/16/22 12:12 AM, Nilesh Patra wrote:
>>
> > On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 06:17:02PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> 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.
> 
Hi Chuck,

*Just because you're a DD* is not a priority call for bugs. At least one
of the bugs you reference is for Xen and seems to have bounced between
Debian and kernel devs. and still, perhaps, not to be fixed, for example.

Xen is a much lower priority than it used to be when it was the first
hypervisor in common use. There are fewer maintainers _anywhere_ with
deep knowledge of Xen. If the bug with Xen keyboard doesnt' get fixed
quickly in Debian, it may be bacause there isn't a maintainer / there
are other higher priority bugs / it genuinely should be fixed upstream.

If you know a fix - you can talk to the Xen maintainer in Debian, you could 
submit a patch, you could ask them if they want to work with you to see
it fixed. If they say it's a wishlist bug / they have higher priorities on
their tiem - you can still help.

You can politely ask the Linux kernel maintainers similarly. You can ask the
Linux Foundation at xenproject.org if the bug is still there in their version.
It's a "do-ocracy" that may rely on you to chase.

I reiterate my suggestion to you to go and read list archives / documentation
/ the Codes of Conduct to get a better picture of who you are asking, what
you are asking for and generally "How Debian works". Long messages to 
debian-user and debian-project may not help here as an initial approach.

Russ and Wouter and others have made suggestions as to how to approach
people in a better way so that they will listen to you and read what
you have to say more readily.

With every good wish,

Andy Cater


> >
> > 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
> 

Re: Fwd: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/16/22 6:01 AM, Wouter Verhelst wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 09:51:03PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > On 9/15/22 8:33 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > > Or maybe the problem is that you want to be able to tell people what to
> > > do, but you don't want to have to pay them?  If so, uh, good luck with
> > > that!
> > >
> > 
> > I am sorry you misunderstand me. Please stop putting words in
> > my mouth. Let me speak for myself. I don't need you to tell me
> > what I think about Debian. I know what I think about Debian.
> > You obviously do not.
>
> Russ does have point though in that if you don't like something in
> Debian, there are really only two things you can do to fix that
> situation for yourself:
>
> - Get involved as a contributor, and help out fixing the problems that
>   exist
> - Stop using Debian, and use something else.

Are those the only two possible ways to respond to the current
situation at Debian? I can think of other ways. Am I not free to
continue to use Debian because I think it is very good though
not exactly what I want it to be? And am I not free to continue to
use Debian even if I cannot convince the maintainers to fix every
single Debian bug I experience? Debian is amazing, it has a unique
place in the free software world. I expect to be a Debian user for the
foreseeable future.

Best regards,

Chuck

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/15/22 10:23 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Chuck Zmudzinski  writes:
>
> > I am sorry you misunderstand me. Please stop putting words in my
> > mouth. Let me speak for myself. I don't need you to tell me what I think
> > about Debian. I know what I think about Debian.  You obviously do not.
>
> You really need to internalize the fact that I don't work for you and you
> don't get to give me orders, as frustrating as this may be for you.

You still don't understand me. I am not trying to tell you what to do.
I am not frustrated either. Actually I am enjoying myself here!

Best regards,

Chuck

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

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

Re: Fwd: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Wouter Verhelst]

On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 09:51:03PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> On 9/15/22 8:33 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
> > Or maybe the problem is that you want to be able to tell people what to
> > do, but you don't want to have to pay them?  If so, uh, good luck with
> > that!
> >
> 
> I am sorry you misunderstand me. Please stop putting words in
> my mouth. Let me speak for myself. I don't need you to tell me
> what I think about Debian. I know what I think about Debian.
> You obviously do not.

Russ does have point though in that if you don't like something in
Debian, there are really only two things you can do to fix that
situation for yourself:

- Get involved as a contributor, and help out fixing the problems that
  exist
- Stop using Debian, and use something else.

All these are valid approaches.

You don't have to be involved as a contributor in Debian; nobody forces
you to. If you don't want to do that, however, then you won't be
involved in decision making either; that's just a fact, and one that
will not change (well, it might change if we ever bring it to a vote,
but if you want to bring that to a vote you have to get voting rights
and that means you have to contribute in some way first).

You don't have to use Debian; nobody forces you to. If there are things
in Debian which you dislike, but there is another distribution that has
ideas and values that align better with how you think things should be
done, then that's great, and you should move to that distribution! It
will make both you and us happier, I'm sure.

Nobody is saying that the situation as it currently exists is perfect.
Debian is definitely flawed, and it probably always will be. You can
help us work on that *if* you're willing to help with the work that is
required to improve matters, but again, nobody forces you to do so if
you don't want to do that (or don't have either the skills to do so or
the money to pay someone with the skills to do them at your request).

If you don't want to work on improving things, and you don't want to
move to another distribution, then there is really one other final
action you can take:

- Accept the fact that Debian is not perfect, and live with it.

-- 
 w@uter.{be,co.za}
wouter@{grep.be,fosdem.org,debian.org}

I will have a Tin-Actinium-Potassium mixture, thanks.

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Nilesh Patra]

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.

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. 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, 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?

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.

-- 
Best,
Nilesh


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Fwd: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/15/22 8:33 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Chuck Zmudzinski  writes:
>
>> 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 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?
>
>> 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.
>
> So let's see if I've got this right.  You don't like Debian's governance
> structure or its constitution.  You don't like that it's a volunteer
> project.  You think the software is lower-quality than software maintained
> by paid developers.  It has a bunch of bugs that annoy you that you don't
> think you can get fixed.  And you don't feel welcome in the community.
>
> You... do realize that you can just not use Debian, right?  It's okay to
> use another Linux distribution that suits you better!  This is an entirely
> consensual relationship!  We won't make you use Debian, I promise!
>
> I'm all for sticking around and trying to fix things that you think are
> broken, but these aren't some minor disagreements.  These are some really
> foundational mismatches.  You seem to like Debian except for... literally
> everything about how the project is organized and run.
>
> There are a lot of other Linux distributions out there with different
> philosophies and different organizations, and it's not some sort of
> betrayal to go look at a different one.  No one wants you to be unhappy
> and frustrated, including everyone involved in Debian!
>
> You could, for example, go give Red Hat money and then get that higher
> quality software from paid developers that you want.  They'll give you a
> support contract and you can tell them what bugs you want fixed, and
> they'll give you a quote, and you can give them money, and they'll fix the
> bugs that you want fixed, and you can stop investing all this time and
> effort in writing extremely long mail mesages to volunteers to convince
> them that volunteering is bad, actually.
>
> Or maybe the problem is that you want to be able to tell people what to
> do, but you don't want to have to pay them?  If so, uh, good luck with
> that!
>

I am sorry you misunderstand me. Please stop putting words in
my mouth. Let me speak for myself. I don't need you to tell me
what I think about Debian. I know what I think about Debian.
You obviously do not.

Best regards,

Chuck

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Russ Allbery]

Chuck Zmudzinski  writes:

> 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 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?

> 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.

So let's see if I've got this right.  You don't like Debian's governance
structure or its constitution.  You don't like that it's a volunteer
project.  You think the software is lower-quality than software maintained
by paid developers.  It has a bunch of bugs that annoy you that you don't
think you can get fixed.  And you don't feel welcome in the community.

You... do realize that you can just not use Debian, right?  It's okay to
use another Linux distribution that suits you better!  This is an entirely
consensual relationship!  We won't make you use Debian, I promise!

I'm all for sticking around and trying to fix things that you think are
broken, but these aren't some minor disagreements.  These are some really
foundational mismatches.  You seem to like Debian except for... literally
everything about how the project is organized and run.

There are a lot of other Linux distributions out there with different
philosophies and different organizations, and it's not some sort of
betrayal to go look at a different one.  No one wants you to be unhappy
and frustrated, including everyone involved in Debian!

You could, for example, go give Red Hat money and then get that higher
quality software from paid developers that you want.  They'll give you a
support contract and you can tell them what bugs you want fixed, and
they'll give you a quote, and you can give them money, and they'll fix the
bugs that you want fixed, and you can stop investing all this time and
effort in writing extremely long mail mesages to volunteers to convince
them that volunteering is bad, actually.

Or maybe the problem is that you want to be able to tell people what to
do, but you don't want to have to pay them?  If so, uh, good luck with
that!

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)  

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/15/2022 11:59 AM, Gerardo Ballabio wrote:
> Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > I have read much of the documentation online about how Debian understands
> itself, but I have never heard the term "do-ocracy" before.
>
> As I understand, it is an informal term, as such I don't expect to
> find it in formal documents. I read it as meaning "those who do the
> work run the show". I believe that is a sensible rule for a community
> of volunteers.
>
> > Obviously, my proposal would need to somehow define who are the users
> that should be given a formal vote for GRs, the DPL, etc.
>
> I do believe that being open to listening to other people's advice is
> a virtue, and that the Debian project should definitely listen to its
> users, but I don't think that this should necessarily translate into
> voting rights.
>
> Besides, voting isn't always the best way to make decisions. On
> technical matters it is usually better to let it to those who know the
> subject best, and those are normally the people who routinely work on
> it -- which brings us back to the "do-ocracy" concept.
>
> Also, please consider that while voting rights are restricted to
> Debian members, discussions are usually open to everybody, so if you'd
> like to contribute to Debian's decision-making process, you already
> can.
>
> > I actually, after some fruitful
> discussion with some of the people on debian-user, tentatively came to the
> conclusion that the fact that Debian is created by volunteers is probably one
> of the biggest *disadvantages* of Debian software.
>
> If you could explain concisely how you came to that conclusion, I'd
> like to read it. My view is quite the opposite but I suppose that
> learning a different way of thinking about this issue may help me
> widen my perspective.

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 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?

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.

Best regards,

Chuck

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Gerardo Ballabio]

Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> I have read much of the documentation online about how Debian understands
itself, but I have never heard the term "do-ocracy" before.

As I understand, it is an informal term, as such I don't expect to
find it in formal documents. I read it as meaning "those who do the
work run the show". I believe that is a sensible rule for a community
of volunteers.

> Obviously, my proposal would need to somehow define who are the users
that should be given a formal vote for GRs, the DPL, etc.

I do believe that being open to listening to other people's advice is
a virtue, and that the Debian project should definitely listen to its
users, but I don't think that this should necessarily translate into
voting rights.

Besides, voting isn't always the best way to make decisions. On
technical matters it is usually better to let it to those who know the
subject best, and those are normally the people who routinely work on
it -- which brings us back to the "do-ocracy" concept.

Also, please consider that while voting rights are restricted to
Debian members, discussions are usually open to everybody, so if you'd
like to contribute to Debian's decision-making process, you already
can.

> I actually, after some fruitful
discussion with some of the people on debian-user, tentatively came to the
conclusion that the fact that Debian is created by volunteers is probably one
of the biggest *disadvantages* of Debian software.

If you could explain concisely how you came to that conclusion, I'd
like to read it. My view is quite the opposite but I suppose that
learning a different way of thinking about this issue may help me
widen my perspective.

> you get out of Debian what you put into it.

In fact, I believe I received much more than I gave, and I hope I'm not alone.

Gerardo

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Russ Allbery]

Chuck Zmudzinski  writes:

> The theory behind my proposal is that there is a diversity of viewpoints
> that stems from a diversity of roles within the project. If the voting
> members are restricted only to the contributors who volunteer for the
> role of developer, then the full diversity of the Debian community is
> not reflected in a vote that only comes from the pool of formal
> developers.

I think it depends a lot what the viewpoints are being diverse *over*.  If
you've formed a group of people to go pick up litter, it's not helpful to
have a diversity of opinions about whether or not litter should be picked
up.  That is just silly.  And, somewhat more on point, it's not helpful to
have a bunch of members who have no intention of going out on the street
and picking up litter, but who have strong opinions about how other people
should do so.  This is not useful diversity.

There are numerous Linux distributions with different viewpoints about how
to make a Linux distribution.  That's diversity, real diversity, in terms
of distribution goals and structure.  It's the kind of diversity that
involves completely independent organizations making completely
independent decisions with different financial structures, different
founding principles, and so forth.  As a Linux user, you can explore that
diversity by picking and choosing which distributions you install and use.

Within any given project, including Debian, we're all trying to do
something together, which inherently requires some amount of agreement and
consensus.  At some level, this is the opposite of a diversity of opinion.
We have to roughly agree on a course of action, at least at some level and
with some rough, in order to make forward progress.  One of the things
that's helpful to avoid endless decision paralysis, or to avoid a bunch of
people who are not in a position to do the work voting for things the
people who are doing the work don't want to do, is that we ask everyone
who is voting on major decisions to have significant skin in the game.
The implicit assumption behind GR voting is that to some extent you're
then going to go help implement what we all voted for, because we're the
only people who can.

The voters are the same group as the implementors.  We're using voting to
help guide consensus among the same group that has to do the work.  If no
one does the work, the GR is useless and pointless and there's no reason
to have held it.  That tends to significantly inform our voting.  It's
something that I think about with every GR.

To make that concrete, you can hold as many GRs as you would like saying
that every bug in Debian with a tested patch should be applied and
uploaded, and it will accomplish precisely nothing.  Changing who votes on
such GRs is useless; the whole theoretical model behind such a vote is
wrong.  Work happens in Debian because someone does it.  Voting doesn't
change that; what changes that is more people doing work.

If you think a package is being neglected by its maintainer, we have
processes for that, but they mostlly require that you, the person who
wants to make a change, step up and be the maintainer.  If no one is
willing to step up and be the maintainer, the package will continue to be
neglected.  Voting is not a magic spell.

> Michael Stone followed me to this list and condemned for me asking
> questions here on this list. There is no way *he* considers me a member
> of the Debian community who has a formal voice as a Debian user.

This is Michael thinking you're being annoying and wasting people's time
and telling you so, while warning other people who don't follow
debian-user that arguing with you may be futile.  It has nothing to do
with whether or not he considers you a member of a community.  I can
assure you that he'd say the same thing to a DPL if he thought they were
being annoying and futile to argue with.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)  

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/15/2022 7:26 AM, Clément Hermann wrote:
> Hi,
>
>
> Le 15/09/2022 à 12:37, Chuck Zmudzinski a écrit :
>
> > 
> > Obviously, my proposal would need to somehow define who are the users
> > that should be given a formal vote for GRs, the DPL, etc. Maybe "true users
> > of Debian" is the wrong phrase to define it, maybe the correct idea is 
> > expressed
> > by "contributor with voting rights." Maybe the voting developers can
> > nominate contributors who are not developers who should be given voting
> > rights, and if the person nominated receives a simple majority, or some 
> > higher
> > majority like 2/3, then that person gains voting rights even though that 
> > person
> > is not a developer. The theory behind my proposal is that there is a 
> > diversity
> > of viewpoints that stems from a diversity of roles within the project. If 
> > the
> > voting members are restricted only to the contributors who volunteer for
> > the role of developer, then the full diversity of the Debian community is
> > not reflected in a vote that only comes from the pool of formal developers.
>
> I would just like to point out that it is possible (and it has been 
> done) to become a Debian Member with voting rights without a developer 
> role. This is what we call "Debian Developer, non-uploading" (or Debian 
> Member).
>
> You have to be a contributor, still, and follow the New Member process - 
> more information is available at
> https://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint

Thanks Clement, for your advice.

Well, maybe if I can convince a sponsor to help me with issues that might arise
as the bookworm release approaches to make some contributions to that
effort might be something I could do, whether or not I ever decide to formally
apply for membership. I do know in all my contributions so far, at least two
maintainers have said that many maintainers sorely lack experience with
testing on Xen, and that is something I could contribute to, perhaps in the
grub, the d-i, systemd, the kernel, or Qemu. Recently I authored a patch
accepted by Qemu upstream that fixed a bug I reported to the BTS that
affected Xen and the Linux kernel. That bug was just closed earlier this week
by a recent upload of the latest Qemu packages for unstable.

Xen provides multiple computing environments and is currently
not easy to use, and maybe I could seek a developer interested in Xen as a
mentor, Ian Jackson comes to mind and he is still officially a member of
the Debian Xen Team but Hans van Kranenburg is doing most of the day
to day work and I get the impression he is not a DD but a DM and IIUC
he cannot be a sponsor if he is not a DD.

I could help maintainers for packages such as grub, systemd, the kernel, etc.
indirectly by helping the Xen Team by at least getting Xen into good enough
shape so it is easier for other package maintainers to create tests of Debian
in the various Xen computing environments that Debian aims to support with
an initial goal of just determining all the Xen environments where Debian either
does not boot at all or it is not so easy to configure it to boot properly.

Maybe I could help with the release team hunting down issues that should
be in the documentation for the bookworm release and learn more about
that process. Documentation is something that is much easier said than
done well. Debian's documentation is pretty good, though, IMHO. I really
would *not* to work on the documentation for Xen which is very old and out
of date and really should not be updated until it is fixed on Debian so it is
more user friendly. Once Xen is fixed on Debian so it is easier to configure,
then the documentation for Xen can be updated.

Translations, unfortunately, is not something I can do, I am mainly an en-us
person. I know enough about French to guess that it might be your first 
language,
but that's about it.

I am a little afraid about how to approach possible mentors with my offer for
help as I am a little gun shy when it comes to dealing with Debian people,
as you might imagine after what some people say about me in the
places governed by the Debian Social Contract and the Debian Code of
Conduct. There are people there who want me to do no more than send
a gentle ping about a bug I might be experiencing. They say very clearly
that anything more I might try to do to help Debian is *not welcome* by
the Debian community. You and Andy have said enough to help me to try
to ignore those negative voices, but I am afraid to just send out offers of
help to random DDs. Any tips you can give me about how to overcome
that problem that is particular to my case are welcome.

Best regards,

Chuck

> > 
> > I subscribed to the debian-project list for the time being so you can reply 
> > on-list
> > from now on.
>
> ACK :)
>
> Cheers,
>

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Clément Hermann]

Hi,


Le 15/09/2022 à 12:37, Chuck Zmudzinski a écrit :



Obviously, my proposal would need to somehow define who are the users
that should be given a formal vote for GRs, the DPL, etc. Maybe "true users
of Debian" is the wrong phrase to define it, maybe the correct idea is expressed
by "contributor with voting rights." Maybe the voting developers can
nominate contributors who are not developers who should be given voting
rights, and if the person nominated receives a simple majority, or some higher
majority like 2/3, then that person gains voting rights even though that person
is not a developer. The theory behind my proposal is that there is a diversity
of viewpoints that stems from a diversity of roles within the project. If the
voting members are restricted only to the contributors who volunteer for
the role of developer, then the full diversity of the Debian community is
not reflected in a vote that only comes from the pool of formal developers.


I would just like to point out that it is possible (and it has been 
done) to become a Debian Member with voting rights without a developer 
role. This is what we call "Debian Developer, non-uploading" (or Debian 
Member).


You have to be a contributor, still, and follow the New Member process - 
more information is available at

https://www.debian.org/devel/join/newmaint


I subscribed to the debian-project list for the time being so you can reply 
on-list
from now on.


ACK :)

Cheers,

--
nodens

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

> [Poster is cc'd by me because he is not subscribed to the debian-project list]
>
> On Wed, Sep 14, 2022 at 03:17:03PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > On 9/14/2022 12:22 PM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> > > People of debian-user :)
> > >
> > > This thread does seem to be degenerating slightly into accusations and
> > > name-calling, justified or not. Without prejudice to anyone: please may
> > > I remind you that debian-user and all Debian lists and IRC channels are
> > > subject to the Debian Code of Conduct.
> > >
> > > It would be very much appreciated if disagreements could be resolved
> > > constructively and in a positive way. Ad hominem attacks don't help
> > > anyone here. Taking a breath / walking away from the keyboard for half
> > > a day might also help get a sense of perspective in any mailing list
> > > opinion difference. (And yes, I know about https://xkcd.com/386/ and
> > > the difficulty that brings).
> > >
> > > With every good wish, as ever,
> > >
> > > Andy Cater
> > >
> > > [For and on behalf of the Debian Community Team]
> > >
> >
> > Thanks for this, Andy, I admit I did get caught up in behavior that appears
> > as trolling.
> >
> > As you point out, the aforementioned thread only slightly has degenerated
> > and I think there are some useful discussions in it despite the problems.
> > One legitimate topic for discussion that arose in that thread is:
> >
> > Are only Debian Developers with voting rights (DDs) considered to be members
> > of the Debian community, or are the users also members of the Debian 
> > community?
> >
>
> Hi Chuck,
>
> I'm going to assume good intent and answer you as best I can. At its heart,
> Debian is a "do-ocracy" and you get out of it what you're able to put into
> it.

Thanks again, Andy, for your kind reply and explanation to better explain
Debian. I have to think about what you say as Debian as a "do-ocracy" and
that I get out of it what I am able to put into it.

I have read much of the documentation online about how Debian understands
itself, but I have never heard the term "do-ocracy" before. As you put it, you 
get
out of Debian what you put into it. I have put much effort into it over the 
years,
and I have received benefits in return for my efforts. I really never thought of
contributing to Debian out of my own self-interest. I always wanted to do it out
of the Debian community's interests, the "give back to the community what you
have learned" principle that really, I think, is a strong aspect in favor of 
free
software. This thinking of mine, that what Debian people do should be done
for the community, is, surprisingly to me, something that is contrary to the
"do-ocracy" of working on Debian not for the community but for one's own
benefit. That fundamental misunderstanding might be at the root of the
conflicts I am having with some Debian people over on debian-user. What
you said here about "do-ocracy" is very enlightening.

> We're all volunteers and that has to be remembered.

In the discussion going on that I started on debian-user about the advantages
and disadvantages of free software like Debian, I actually, after some fruitful
discussion with some of the people on debian-user, tentatively came to the
conclusion that the fact that Debian is created by volunteers is probably one
of the biggest *disadvantages* of Debian software. But you are saying Debian's
usefulness is not measured by how many bugs are fixed, and most Debian users
are not as annoyed as I am that some bugs are ignored for a long time. One 
person
agreed it is annoying when known fixes for bugs are not applied, but not that 
big a
deal because with free software the known fix can be applied by the user. For a 
long
time I thought that way and just accepted that some bug reports are going to be
ignored, but really it was more curiosity than anything else that made me 
wonder,
why do they ignore bugs for so long at Debian, so I just directly asked the 
question
but I still have not received a straight answer, and now I have discovered 
Debian
ignores bugs and doesn't always fix them even when there is a known fix. It 
just is
a mystery to me but your description of Debian as a "do-ocracy" sheds some light
on the mystery of it all. Still, I cannot actually fix the bug in the official, 
released,
software. I cannot participate in the "do-ocracy" of contributing a fix. Only a 
maintainer
or developer can do that. So I am powerless to contribute a fix if no developer 
or
maintainer will agree that my fix is a good idea or if the developers and 
maintainers
just ignore my proposals, fixes, and questions for unknown reasons. If they 
just ignore
my polite pings, as one person suggested on debian-user is all I am allowed to 
do,
then I am *totally powerless*  to participate in what you call the "do-ocracy" 
of Debian.
They use their power and influence in the community to make me powerless and
unable to contribute. The only thing I can do is apply the fix on my own 
machines
and

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Michael Stone]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2022 at 03:17:03PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:

Thanks for this, Andy, I admit I did get caught up in behavior that appears
as trolling.

As you point out, the aforementioned thread only slightly has degenerated
and I think there are some useful discussions in it despite the problems.
One legitimate topic for discussion that arose in that thread is:

Are only Debian Developers with voting rights (DDs) considered to be members
of the Debian community, or are the users also members of the Debian community?


You were asked to stop, and you haven't stopped--you just moved to 
another mailing list. You've been behaving the same way for quite some
time, raising "questions" that repeat regardless of the answers you get, 
and there doesn't seem to be any real possibility that additional 
engagement will change that rather than encouraging more of the same.

Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Chuck Zmudzinski]

On 9/14/2022 12:22 PM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> People of debian-user :)
>
> This thread does seem to be degenerating slightly into accusations and
> name-calling, justified or not. Without prejudice to anyone: please may
> I remind you that debian-user and all Debian lists and IRC channels are
> subject to the Debian Code of Conduct.
>
> It would be very much appreciated if disagreements could be resolved
> constructively and in a positive way. Ad hominem attacks don't help
> anyone here. Taking a breath / walking away from the keyboard for half
> a day might also help get a sense of perspective in any mailing list
> opinion difference. (And yes, I know about https://xkcd.com/386/ and
> the difficulty that brings).
>
> With every good wish, as ever,
>
> Andy Cater
>
> [For and on behalf of the Debian Community Team]
>

Thanks for this, Andy, I admit I did get caught up in behavior that appears
as trolling.

As you point out, the aforementioned thread only slightly has degenerated
and I think there are some useful discussions in it despite the problems.
One legitimate topic for discussion that arose in that thread is:

Are only Debian Developers with voting rights (DDs) considered to be members
of the Debian community, or are the users also members of the Debian community?

If Debian users are also members of the community, their opinion should be
valued, but what mechanism exists for the voice of Debian users to be heard in
the decisions that DDs make about the Debian Project? I ask this question
because AFAICT, the users have no formal voice at all in the decisions about
how the Debian Project is run. And this fact is perhaps why I am misunderstood
by some on debian-user. Debian-user seems to be dominated by the idea that
a mere user of Debian software should have no voice in the decisions, no matter
how great or how small that decision might be, that the Debian Project has to
face each day. For example, a little decision: a package maintainer decides
whether or not to respond to a bug report, and a big decision: the DDs vote
on resolutions to determine the level of support for non-default init systems.

I think Debian users should have some say, some voting power, some way
of influencing the direction of the Debian Project because in the end the
long-term success of the project depends on whether or not Debian software
is continues to be useful for its users over the long term. I think if over time
Debian becomes software that is only useful to the DDs and not to a large
pool of users around the world who are passionate about free software,
Debian would have failed in its mission of providing useful free software to
users around the world. The point of view of users, IMHO, needs more
representation in the official decisions and policies of Debian because it
seems to me that the importance of providing useful software for the
many users of Debian software is not sufficiently recognized on, of all
places, the mailing list for Debian users!

I offer this as food for though to see if the way Debian is governed can
be improved to ensure the legitimate voices of Debian users are heard. I
especially would be interested to hear practical suggestions for how a vote
of users on any particular issue could take place, what weight should be given
to the vote of the users relative to the vote of the DDs, how users could 
propose
that a change in Debian Policy be put up for a vote, and how to ensure only
true users of Debian vote on any particular proposal or in the election of the
DPL, etc.

I understand this idea cannot be implemented soon. But would it be wrong
for someone to propose the idea that Debian users should have a formal
voice in the decisions that the Debian Project needs to face on a daily basis?

N.B. I am not subscribed to debian-project, so if those who respond could Cc
me on replies, I would appreciate it. I also am not posting this to debian-user,
to which I am subscribed, to let the emotions die down there a bit and in
recognition of the fact that debian-user is probably not the best place to post
this question at this time.

Best regards,

Chuck

Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

[Poster is cc'd by me because he is not subscribed to the debian-project list]

On Wed, Sep 14, 2022 at 03:17:03PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> On 9/14/2022 12:22 PM, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> > People of debian-user :)
> >
> > This thread does seem to be degenerating slightly into accusations and
> > name-calling, justified or not. Without prejudice to anyone: please may
> > I remind you that debian-user and all Debian lists and IRC channels are
> > subject to the Debian Code of Conduct.
> >
> > It would be very much appreciated if disagreements could be resolved
> > constructively and in a positive way. Ad hominem attacks don't help
> > anyone here. Taking a breath / walking away from the keyboard for half
> > a day might also help get a sense of perspective in any mailing list
> > opinion difference. (And yes, I know about https://xkcd.com/386/ and
> > the difficulty that brings).
> >
> > With every good wish, as ever,
> >
> > Andy Cater
> >
> > [For and on behalf of the Debian Community Team]
> >
> 
> Thanks for this, Andy, I admit I did get caught up in behavior that appears
> as trolling.
> 
> As you point out, the aforementioned thread only slightly has degenerated
> and I think there are some useful discussions in it despite the problems.
> One legitimate topic for discussion that arose in that thread is:
> 
> Are only Debian Developers with voting rights (DDs) considered to be members
> of the Debian community, or are the users also members of the Debian 
> community?
> 

Hi Chuck,

I'm going to assume good intent and answer you as best I can. At its heart,
Debian is a "do-ocracy" and you get out of it what you're able to put into
it. We're all volunteers and that has to be remembered.

"The community" in its broadest sense is the developers, maintainers,
contributors and the users - everyone building and using Debian for whatever
purpose. You don't normally get recognition just for using Debian but you
build up a reputation by contributing. 

You don't have to be a Debian maintainer or a Debian developer to contribute.
You can file good bug reports - or check reports opened by other people and
reply if your experience is similar/you're using identical hardware, say, and
the bug bites you. You can contribute to the Wiki, you can contribute 
positively to the mailing lists. You don't get a vote in general resolutions
(GRs) but you're involved. "Drive by contributors" often gradually decide they
want to become a Debian Maintainer. That means going through a formal process
to check on the sorts of things you can contribute. From there, the step
to being a Debian Developer is relatively small. At that point, you get a 
formal vote on burning issues like GRs.

You  can get a lot more information by looking at the wiki, the documentation
for new maintainers, installing the Debian Administrators handbook - package
debian-handbook .

> If Debian users are also members of the community, their opinion should be
> valued, but what mechanism exists for the voice of Debian users to be heard in
> the decisions that DDs make about the Debian Project? I ask this question
> because AFAICT, the users have no formal voice at all in the decisions about
> how the Debian Project is run. And this fact is perhaps why I am misunderstood
> by some on debian-user. Debian-user seems to be dominated by the idea that
> a mere user of Debian software should have no voice in the decisions, no 
> matter
> how great or how small that decision might be, that the Debian Project has to
> face each day. For example, a little decision: a package maintainer decides
> whether or not to respond to a bug report, and a big decision: the DDs vote
> on resolutions to determine the level of support for non-default init systems.
> 

I'd suggest to anyone to read the mailing list archives for a while and see how
they show Debian and the decision processes we have internally.
https://lists.debian.org/ is a good start. 

Big decisions can take a *long* time and some can be divisive: systemd 
discussions went on for months, sometimes with increasing rancour and
misunderstandings on all sides but that was, perhaps, exceptional in
recent years.

> I think Debian users should have some say, some voting power, some way
> of influencing the direction of the Debian Project because in the end the
> long-term success of the project depends on whether or not Debian software
> is continues to be useful for its users over the long term. I think if over 
> time
> Debian becomes software that is only useful to the DDs and not to a large
> pool of users around the world who are passionate about free software,
> Debian would have failed in its mission of providing useful free software to
> users around the world. The point of view of users, IMHO, needs more
> representation in the official decisions and policies of Debian because it
> seems to me that the importance of providing useful software for the
> many users of Debian software is not sufficiently reco