• long-standing bugs and tar pits (was: Are users of Debian software memb

    From G. Branden Robinson@21:1/5 to Nilesh Patra on Fri Sep 16 18:30:01 2022
    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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  • From Jonathan Dowland@21:1/5 to G. Branden Robinson on Wed Sep 21 08:10:01 2022
    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
    jmtd@debian.org
    🔗 https://jmtd.net

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