Thursday, November 10, 2011

Cool. Censored Mailinglists.

Funny. As soon as someone brings up an unwanted topic, the openSUSE Factory Mailinglist Dictator^WModerator shows up and the rest of the discussion never reaches the list. Without a notice of course.

So that's what I had to say on the topic, and the Factory list will now probably do without me. This post is just that people have a chance to know why their bugreports will be handled the way they are.

Date: Thu, 10 Nov 2011 07:50:03 +0100
From: Stefan Seyfried
To: opensuse-factory@opensuse.org
Subject: Re: Decision making (Was Re: [opensuse-factory] Kmail 4.7 is not
shippable in 12.1)
In-Reply-To: <201111091248.27668.markus.s@kdemail.net>

On 09.11.2011 12:48, Markus Slopianka wrote:

> On Mittwoch 09 November 2011 11:45:27 Stefan Seyfried wrote:
>
>> We should simply revert the mistake of making KDE the default desktop.
>
> https://features.opensuse.org/306967
> https://features.opensuse.org/307495
>
> Live with it, vocal minority!

Well, some time ago it was said that openSUSE is a meritrocracy. Those
who do the work get to decide.

It is very easy for people to first vote "make $BROKEN_DESKTOP default"
and later complain that it does not work.

Obviously, all the people wanting to have a certain desktop as a default
need to make it work. If it doesn't, it does not deserve to be the default.

There is even FATE for that: https://features.opensuse.org/312959
Right now, people vote for not having a working desktop.

That's fine with me. Makes bugfixing much easier: either "RESOLVED -
WORKSFORME", or "Component: KDE4-Workspace", "[x] reassign to default
component owner".
I doubt it improves the user experience, but hey, the users voted for
it, so who am I to complain.

11 comments:

  1. Right, because of course nothing says "censorship" like trying to keep the discussion on-topic.

    You don't include the moderator's statement, which leaves the impression that the "Live with it, vocal minority" was what the moderator said. The moderator's email was this:

    "we are not going to discuss the default desktop choice again. Please
    only send mails that touch the original topic (mail clients).

    Thanks for your consideration."

    And I hope I don't have to explain that "kmail" != "desktop" and "has some bugs" != "does not work". And it isn't like any other desktop is free of bugs either.

    Yes, openSUSE is a meritocracy. And a lot of people who prefer KDE contribute a lot to openSUSE, including to improving KDE. You make it sound like no openSUSE contributor prefers KDE. You obviously don't, but "meritocracy" != "do things my way or else".

    ReplyDelete
  2. I had put in a link to Hennes mail. And the topic of the thread already was changed to "Decision making", so this was not off topic.

    "And many people prefering KDE" != "many people fixing the countless bugs".

    Instead, loads of KDE bugs get shoved down the throats of subsystem maintainers.
    Bluez for example: all bugs reported for 12.1 but one (and that one is not confirmed) could not be reproduced with any other desktop environment. Don't expect me to look at any bluetooth bug if the word "KDE" shows up in the report.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Searching for bluetooth and product: openSUSE 12.1 found 13 bugs. 4 were from gnome users, 4 were from KDE users, and 5 were not identified. It hardly seems that KDE is a particularly bad offender in this regard.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Looking again, in terms of fixing bugs, the major upstream breakage in the KDE bluetooth stack was fixed within a few days, while the gnome one still has not been fixed (or at least the bug report is still open) a month later, not to mention the kernel-panic bug by a gnome user.

    So of the 4 bluetooth bugs reported by KDE users, 2 have been closed, and 1 remaining bug is not KDE-related, leaving 1 possible KDE bug.

    For gnome users 2 have been closed. 1 remaining bug is definitely gnome-related (and has been reported upstream), leaving 1 definite gnome bug and 1 possible gnome bug.

    From this it seems that KDE has had a better track record with bluetooth bugs in openSUSE 12.1 than gnome has.Looking again, in terms of fixing bugs, the major upstream breakage in the KDE bluetooth stack was fixed within a few days, while the gnome one still has not been fixed (or at least the bug report is still open) a month later, not to mention the kernel-panic bug by a gnome user.

    So of the 4 bluetooth bugs reported by KDE users, 2 have been closed, and 1 remaining bug is not KDE-related, leaving 1 possible KDE bug still unresolved.

    For gnome users 2 have been closed. 1 remaining bug is definitely gnome-related (and has been reported upstream), leaving 1 definite gnome bug and 1 possible gnome bug still unresolved.

    From this it seems that KDE has had a better track record with bluetooth bugs in openSUSE 12.1 than gnome has.

    ReplyDelete
  5. That was a clear case of thread hijacking. It started with a problem with mail migration (It wasn't even a problem with kmail2 itself as the subject states).

    And it isn't that KDE is really the default desktop.

    It's only that the radio button is preselected...
    And that is only for new installations...
    And those will not be hit by the migration problem the thread started with...

    So where where will the change of the preselcted radio button help here?
    :-D

    ReplyDelete
  6. Sorry, that was weird. with the double post.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Stefan,

    I have to say in a point I agree with the moderator, we all know where those discussions take people to (and of course I'm one of the regular trolls), and eventually one of this days I'll become the next Kemter.

    On a personal stance and even if we had our disagreements in the past, I think you should consider your decision and continue contributing... I used to play Federated handball (even had 1 modest intervention on the national team) and my old coach used to say: "Só faz falta quem cá está!" (Only those who are present will become 'missed').

    Don't turn your back on us dude, we want you to continue contributing and helping openSUSE! You love it, we love you (even KDE haters like me)!

    I hope to see you reconsidering and returning to us, and honestly, you will be missed if you decide not to participate anymore.

    We might be in opposite factions when it comes to Desktop preferences, but we're brothers in arms when it comes to make openSUSE a better experience, and if that isn't strong enough as a cause, what would be ?

    From a friend (at least from my side),
    Nelson Marques

    ReplyDelete
  8. Nelson, I'm certainly not wasting my time on a mailing list where I am not sure if my mails reach the list or if the Censor drops them without even notifying me.

    And I will of course continue contributing, I will just be spending no thought on KDE bugs. It is simple: If I get a bug assigned, and there is no reproduction without involving KDE, it is going to the KDE maintainers. It's that easy.

    The response to my feature request has clearly shown that the people that are voting on features (where I am pretty sure that this is a different group of persons than the ones actually fixing the problems) does not want a working desktop. Well, let them have their wish :-) But I won't care if something is broken for them.

    ReplyDelete
  9. "If I get a bug assigned, and there is no reproduction without involving KDE, it is going to the KDE maintainers. It’s that easy."

    I take it you have no problem dealing with Gnome bugs, despite the fact that KDE has done a better job with bluetooth bugs during the 12.1 cycle than Gnome has. I have no problem having DE maintainers dealing with DE-related bugs. But if you are only going to deal with Gnome-specific bugs, maybe you should be on the gnome team rather than claiming, wrongly, to be working for the whole distro.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'm not sure about where your statistics are from (hint: I work on "bluetooth bugs" even without a bugzilla report) but from what I have seen during 12.1, only one bug (the famous "BT is completely broken in GNOME" from Vincent) was from a GNOME user. And that is one that I cannot reproduce - it might be a hardware issue or some temporary glitch, I'm waiting on feedback for this.

    There's no need for me being in the GNOME Team btw, the GNOME apps are simply the reference implementation both for Bluetooth and for Networkmanager (that's the things I'm mostly involved with). For suspend / power management, there is (phew!) no desktop code involved in the paths I am interested in, so I don't care.

    And of course if I get the first bugreport "Bluetooth works in KDE and not in GNOME" then I will instantly reassign this to the GNOME team - it's just that I have never seen it happen but I have seen it the other way round too many times.

    But that's way beyond what I wanted to tell. Take the discussion to the mailing list, nobody is going to read it here anyway.

    Unfortunately I will not be able to answer because I am censored on that list.

    ReplyDelete
  11. I'm closing comments now due to the spam load. If you want to discuss this, use the factory mailinglist. Don't forget to CC me as my mails only seldom reach that list and thus I'm not reading it anymore.

    ReplyDelete