Omer Akram:

I believe that one should encourage people who are helping to
solve/trying to help with, problems with FOSS. Since neither you nor
other members of the Gwibber team have seen fit to *acknowledge*, let
alone thank the patch contributor in this bug, I have taken the liberty
of congratulating someone who is eager and trying to help sort out
Gwibber problems, *despite* the fact that I no longer use it. (Ha!
There's irony for you! A Gwibber team member doesn't care to thank
contributors, but a non-user cares!)

There have been other patches beside this one. Those have had (AFAIK)
the same lack of overt response from the team. How much encouragement or
positive feedback have you, or any of the Gwibber team, given people who
are trying to help out with the effort? As I write this, it is 40 days
since I filed bug #574979, trying to help the Gwibber dev team by
focusing attention on a bug that was hiding other bugs -- once solved,
it would enable users to make USEFUL contributions in their bug reports
(with meaningful stack traces in at least one tiny area of the vast
project), instead of posting bug reports with erroneous stack traces.

I am not privy to the inner communications of the Gwibber team, so I do
not know if that bug has had any effect at all. What I DO note is that
there has been ZERO feedback, negative or otherwise, on that bug. And,
since (as you have noted), I have stopped using Gwibber, I no longer
look at the source code to see if the devs have fixed the issue. Many
other projects' developers actually communicate on bug reports, even if
it's a terse 'fixed in ver. x.y.z'. On the Gwibber bug reports that I'm
subscribed to, I have seen zero such communications, which makes me feel
that the Gwibber team doesn't even care about bug reports. I'm sure I'm
not alone in this feeling.

I didn't expect instantaneous feedback to my bug (no. cited above). Nor,
until you now gratuitously labeled my comments as "spam", did I mention
the lack of attention. I understand that FOSS developers are busy
people, and have multiple priorities, and moreover, that no user can
*demand* attention to a particular bug or issue. That's fine; I respect
the commitment and work of FOSS developers, including those working on
Gwibber. However, if all the bug reports people make are (seemingly)
ignored, then pray tell me what is the benefit of this system? If the
bug reports are not being used for the purpose they were meant -
interaction between developers and users in identifying and FIXING flaws
in the code - then what is the use? And why may the bug-report comment
system not be used by a non-Gwibber-user to praise the effort of other
people in trying to help solve problems in Gwibber (even if it is
ignored by the Gwibber team)??

I appreciate that you, Omer Akram, seem to be doing useful and good work
related to Gwibber. However, despite your being a member of the Gwibber
team, I see no evidence that you have brought relevant, possibly useful,
patches and bugs to the notice of the developers. Maybe the Gwibber devs
know all, and don't need bug reports? If so, it might save a lot of
people's time if this is just made known to users. The attitude has
frustrated, and is frustrating, a lot of people. Perhaps no one cares
because "it all works in the en_US locale, which is the big target
market for the distro..."?? And other countries don't matter...??
Whatever the reason, the attitude that is coming across to a lot of
people is NOT positive!

Instead of labeling people's comments as "spam", perhaps it would be
helpful for you, and the team, to sit back and realize the impression of
you that is coming across to the world. The world of potential users,
potential contributors... the world of people who probably soon realize
that filing bugs on Gwibber seems like a waste of time because there is
apparently no response from the developers, the people who MATTER. I
entreat you, Gwibber team: examine your priorities, and see if you can
spare some time to interact with your users, who have problems - because
if not, like me, they will go away and look for another option. The joke
is that people moan about low FOSS adoption rates... if the perceived
attitude is actually the attitude of the dev team, I am not surprised
that users walk away from such projects, and sometimes, from FOSS in
general!

I have had my say, and done my best to be civil and cordial throughout,
despite the obvious frustration that I have experienced in this regard.
If you, or anyone, feel that I have violated some rule of the Ubuntu
code of conduct, then please go ahead and terminate my account. If the
treatment that is meted out to new contributors (who are doing what the
Gwibber team should have done, in thanking/interacting with
contributors), is to label their comments as 'spam'... then there isn't
much use remaining a member here.

Thank you,
Ed S.

-- 
Gwibber doesn't refresh streams (unsupported locale/language error not handled)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/533017
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.

-- 
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs

Reply via email to