Maintainer Responsibilities

[Juha Tuomala]

On Wednesday 03 June 2009 02:34:17 Kevin Kofler wrote:
> It's the reporter's job to report the bug upstream when asked to do so.

Would to make the report then if she says 'no'? :)

> Fixing bugs often requires two-way communication, so it's important for
> upstream to have a real reporter to talk to, I don't see why it should be
> the maintainer's job to play the relaying monkey. We're not carrier
> pigeons. We can't even CC the reporter on the upstream bug unless they
> register an account there, and at that point they can just as well file the
> bug themselves.

It's a fact that knowledge increases when you move steps
to upstream. And it also becomes more strange (debugging steps) 
to the regular user. Even finding the matching upstream bug can
be quite impossible to the most users. In my experience, the bugzilla
andvanced interface is way too confusing to someone who has never seen
it before.

If a packager don't have time to do that stuff, he would probably
need a co-maintainer(s) or less packages.

In case the reporter is able to do all that what package manintaers wish
to off-load to her, she's probably already doing that without asking. 
But putting that as a policy and demand it is not the way to go imo.

As amount of people grow when going down the stream, so does the 
communication. It takes time and less talk and more coding is what 
everyone wants. Thus the distro plays an important part as chocking
point between the devs and vast userspace.


Tuju

-- 
Better to have one, and not need it, than to need one and not have it.