Lack of update information

Chris Weyl cweyl at alumni.drew.edu
Tue Jan 27 20:59:21 UTC 2009


On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 12:51 PM, Rahul Sundaram
<sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> Chris Weyl wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 12:42 AM, Rahul Sundaram
>> <sundaram at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Chris Weyl wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Not to be blunt, but "too bad".  That's why we're called
>>>> "maintainers", and they are "end users".
>>>
>>> Maintainers are supposed to serve and meet end user needs and not the
>>> other
>>> way around.
>>
>> That would be completely true IF we were being paid for this;
>> otherwise we have to acknowledge that it's a matter of enlightened
>> self-interest to contribute.  Right?
>
> False dichotomy.
>
> Regardless of whether you are paid to do it or not, you are there to meet
> users and community needs. I would argue more so, if you are volunteer since
> the people who are doing it just because they are getting paid are doing it
> for the money instead of the users. I don't think anybody in the Fedora
> community is that way.
>
> If you don't even want to try, you might as well as stop doing it and
> enlightened self interest isn't incompatible with serving users needs at
> all. In fact, your enlightened self interest must compel you to work
> together with other contributors to do a good job of it instead of excusing
> yourself because you are volunteer just like the majority in this community.
>
> If you read the guidelines, they are very simple common sense items that
> package maintainers have been expected to follow all along. I am merely
> documenting them for everybody's benefit especially new maintainers.

Of course we're here to meet users needs, but WE are those users as
well... and we're putting ourselves in a bad spot when we forget that.

I'm not sure what this "if you don't even want to try" bit is about,
since this isn't about me, it's about imposing another manual task on
our maintainers.  Arguing against that isn't not working "together
with other contributors", it's discussing how we can make use of those
limited resources.  Every little thing may seem reasonable, but then,
that's also what they thought about the DMV.

I do read the guidelines, and while there are MANY of them, they tend
to make sense, and where I don't think they do, I still respect them.
I don't think you're "merely documenting them" here, however; this is
_clearly_ a new task being discussed.

                        -Chris
-- 
Chris Weyl
Ex astris, scientia




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