> "Michael K. Johnson" <johnsonm@redhat.com> sez:
>
> ".... please it's polite not to take
> things over without making at least
> some attempt to contact the original
> author, EVEN IF YOU DON'T FEEL THAT
> THEY ARE VERY ACTIVE. ... "
> The thing between Andrea and Michael does bring out this question :
>
> Just what is "POLITE" and what is not?!
The main task for having software usable is _maintainance_. What is the
most impolite behaviour with software is to make some development or some
tempering and then, to go away. This apply to commercial companies and to
individual as well. If one knows it will be unable to maintain his
software or find another maintainer, he should not provide anything.
The second thing that I consider impolite it to shoe-horn one's name in
any source one has made some change. A minute or hour change is a detail
compared to the time needed to develop and to to maintain a whole
software.
> I am not siding with either Andrea or Michael on this matter, but my thinking is
> that if someone wants to maintain something, someone at least _ought_ to be
> active to do the job, or at least be known to still be _ALIVE_ and still willing
> to carry on that function. Else he or she should reliquish their "maintainer"
> status.
There is a difference between the claimed maintainer status and the actual
maintainer status. A software that is either not officially or not
actually maintained should not be used anymore, in theory, since user
might just be stuck at the first failure he will experience. In practice,
having the source code, allows to try to fix the problem and it seems that
this generally succeed. A software you have the source is _ALIVE_ for you
even if it is temporarily not maintained or not well maintained. A
binary-only software is perhaps just dead for you and you don't know it is
so.
> It is utmostly ridiculous to force people in doing a netwide trace for the
> "ORIGINAL AUTHOR" for any given patch/util if the code hasn't been updated for
> ages, and the so-called "maintainers" just aren't around anywhere.
The original author still maintaining a software is an ideal situation,
not the reality we observe for all softwares. What you point out as
'so-called maintainers' are people that actually spend much time to make
software work. Without any maintainer a software is dead if binary-only
and in comma-mode if source-available, regardless the performance of the
original author(s).
> So what should one do if one finds a bug or two in Linux util/patches?
>
> Should one look high and low for the [elusive] "maintainer"
> or should one just post out the bug-fixed patch?!
>
> Should there be a centralized clearinghouse for all the maintainers, so to make
> it easier for people to find the _UP-TO-DATE_ addresses of the maintainers?
>
> Note: The _UP-TO-DATE_ addresses of the maintainers
> _is_ an important point because there exist
> several addresses of the "maintainers" which
> are no longer valid.
>
> *I am _not_ refering to Mr. Johnson, btw.
> Michael's address _is_ valid.*
>
> IMHO, it is too silly to insist that people must adhere to the "POLITE DOCTRINE"
> if the maintainers did nothing to announce their presence.
The more appropriate place for the address of maintainers is trivially the
source code or some file that is tightly attached to the source code. Any
other place may contain a invalid or not up-to-date address. People that
want to use free software and donnot want to even look into the sources
must purchase a supported O/S package and pay for a commercial support.
For example, I receive, at least once a week, questions from end-users
that have problems with their RedHat installation and that think the
problem is related to the software I maintain. I donnot reply to these
people and am _not_ going to do so.
> To the maintainers:
>
> Please announce your presence, at least once-in-a-while,
> in appropriate fora.
Why not to also pay for advertisements in all technical reviews and
end-user reviews that exist on the planet.
> Please tell us which packages you are maintaining, and
> what you expect us to do when we change/fix the code
> of the packages you are maintaining.
>
> Any comments?
Some people should immediately stop drinking tequilla.
Regards,
Gérard.
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