Maintainer Responsibilities

Ralf Corsepius rc040203 at freenet.de
Thu Jun 4 16:37:34 UTC 2009


David Tardon wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 07:23:05AM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>> Steven M. Parrish wrote:
>>
>>> Many people have mentioned that it is not right to ask the users to 
>>> file their bug reports upstream.  I ask why not? 
>> Let me summarize what I already wrote elsewhere in this thread:
>> * Users aren't necessarily developers.
>> * Users aren't necessarily interested in getting involved upstream.
>> * Users are reporting bugs against your product (your package in  
>> Fedora), not against upstream's work (somebody else's product).
>>
>>
>> Let me try an analogy: How do you handle defects/malfunctions with your  
>> car?
>>
>> You'll visit your car dealer/a garage and report the issue to them.  
>> You'll expect them to identify the problem and to take appropriate steps  
>> to solve your issue.
> 
> Let me try another analogy: How do you handle health problems?
> 
> You'll visit your doctor. You'll expect him to identify the problem and
> to take appropriate steps to solve your issue--that may well be just him
> sending you to a specialist.
Correct.

> Would you expect your doctor to serve as a
> proxy between you and the specialist? Or even substitute you for
> checkup? I wouldn't.
Of course, but in this case "the human" am "the product", which need to 
go through the "bug fixing process".

>> You don't expect them to direct you to the car's  
>> manufacturer or a component manufacturer and to discuss technical  
>> details you have no knowledge about with them ("Is the stuttering engine  
>> cause by triac 7 in a component A you haven't heard about before" or by  
>> the hall sensor in component B you also haven't heard about before).
>>
> 
> Who spoke about technical details?
I do, because analyzing bugs often requires a deep understanding of a 
package's infrastructure/details/etc.. You can't expect end-users to be 
able to have this understanding (nor to be interested in them), but you 
can expect a Fedora packager to have it and to act as relay.

> Have you ever been asked to look into
> the source code of some project? I don't think so.
Oh, many times ...

> An upstream developer
> can ask better/more detailed questions than a packager, but that's only
> to be expected.
Theoretically, yes ... in practice ... not always.

> Btw, I'm really interested to hear why answering questions of an
> upstream developer through a packager as a proxy is better than
> answering the same questions directly...
I never said this - Upstreams contacting reporters, with a package 
maintainer acting as proxy is an option.

Demanding end-users to get involved into upstreams and rendering Fedora 
packagers into "stupid packaging robots", like Kevin's proposal implies, 
is simply absurd.

Ralf




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