Re: Debian bug tracking system contains patch for GPM C-z hang

Hrvoje Niksic <hniksic(a)srce.hr&gt; writes: Is xemacs-patches announced to the outside world anyway? Note that it takes time submit patches. In this particular case it is even more difficult as the patch cannot applied to XEmacs independently. Yes I have seen that discussion I know why they have pissed you of. However I think there is a fundamental problem here and that is not solved by "telling other developers not to cooperate". The problem IMHO lies in what a Linux distribution really is, how people from various sides look at it and what it means to have GNU tools "vendor supplied". A proper Linux distribution is not simply a collection of precompiled binaries. As they are installing GNU tools they play partly the role that used to be played by the system administrators. Therefore things that used to be 'local' hacks are now more in the open. Does it bother you that all XEmacsen here installed in their own tree of /usr/local/app/{version} although that is not the official way to share two different Emacs versions? Does it bother anyone, apart from me, that that here psfrag 3.0 is disabled in favor of 2.0 in teTeX although the psfrag authors would like very much to see it die, etc etc? Likewise I have the old man page for wget installed in my personal software tree (that is also used by others) because sometimes I prefer an outdated manpage over an up to date info file, although I know you would very much like to see it go. Similarly a distribution maintainer might need to make similar decisions. I think it still very much an open question how to solve these problems and I think it is very clear that the four tear system we now have for most Distributions: Author Distribution maintainer Sysadmin user may work very well in case whether the original authorship is unclear, unresponsive etc but is surely not the most optimal solution in the case of an active "Author". Especially as it unclear for users where to turn for support [i.e. user turning to you for problems related to the wget manpage where it would have been no problem if they sent it do the debian maintainer]. Summarizing. Social issues aside, I think there are stil major management problems to solve in the free software/distribution interaction and these tend to escalate any personal problems. I think they would. Lets just make sure ours gets off the ground first. Jan