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Re: How to make a positive impact by contributing

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On zaterdag 17 september 2022 02:32:48 CEST Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> Diederik, a member of the Debian Xen Team

Stop thinking you need have some 'role' to contribute to a (FLOSS) project.

In another part of this thread I linked to my submission to the upstream 
kernel. It got accepted, while for all intends and purposes I'm just a 'random 
guy on the Internet'.

> Diederik, what do you think of the idea of finding a sponsor
> to do an NMU to fix #983357?

That would be a VERY bad idea.
It is an upstream kernel issue and I already described how to proceed:
Write an email to the upstream maintainer(s).

You want to see the issue fixed? Write the damn email!
What you wrote earlier gave the impression that you feel powerless. The way to 
change that is to take control and the best way to do it is do the work 
yourself. The great thing about FLOSS is that you actually can. Now go do it.
That's how you can make a positive impact.

Here's some additional tips (for that email):
- It likely useful to add xen-devel@lists.xenproject.org to the CC list
- Make your email 5 lines (80 char width) long, max 10. GKH likely receives 
100+ emails a day, so the shorter your email is, the more likely it is it gets 
read and hopefully acted upon.
- Linking to the Debian bug is useful, but make sure he doesn't have to read 
(any of) it by including all the needed info in those 5-10 lines.
- When replying to any response, quote as selectively as you can.

Addendum (based on your other/private email):

On vrijdag 16 september 2022 22:03:11 CEST Diederik de Haas wrote:
> On Friday, 16 September 2022 20:41:33 CEST Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> > Please explain why you are asking *me* to do that.
> 
> In a do-ocracy, *someone* needs to do it and it may as well be you.

I've deliberately ignored/not responded to much of the discussion in the hope 
that at least something useful would come out of this.
I have described above and earlier how YOU can make a positive contribution, 
but it really looks like you go out of your way to make other people do the 
work instead of yourself.

You can still CHOOSE to make a positive contribution. Or you don't.
The choice is up to you.

The email message described above/earlier is about raising the issue to the 
upstream maintainers to make them aware of the issue and discuss the best way 
to fix it. So it should NOT include the patch.
This would 'work around' your strong moral objections to 'stealing' Ben's 
magnum opus. You can ofc include something like:
"Ben found that increasing the value of UEVENT_BUFFER_SIZE in include/linux/
kobject.h to 4096 fixed the issue".
I like giving credit where credit is due and that would do it.

In a possible later patch submission, you can add a "Suggested-by:" tag as 
described here: https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/process/submitting-patches.html#using-reported-by-tested-by-reviewed-by-suggested-by-and-fixes
but as that paragraph describes, you should ask Ben's permission for that.

HTH,
  Diederik

PS: don't send me any more private emails; I'm not interested (any more)

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Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community? Gerardo Ballabio <gerardo.ballabio@gmail.com> - 2022-09-15 18:10 +0200
  Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community? Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2022-09-16 02:40 +0200
  Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community? Nilesh Patra <nilesh@debian.org> - 2022-09-16 06:20 +0200
    Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community? "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2022-09-16 15:40 +0200
      Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community? Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org> - 2022-09-16 19:30 +0200
      How to Move an Issue Forward When there is no Energy Sam Hartman <hartmans@debian.org> - 2022-09-16 21:20 +0200
    Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community? Tobias Frost <tobi@debian.org> - 2022-09-16 16:30 +0200
    Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community? Nilesh Patra <nilesh@debian.org> - 2022-09-16 16:30 +0200
      long-standing bugs and tar pits (was: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?) "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> - 2022-09-16 18:30 +0200
        Re: long-standing bugs and tar pits Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org> - 2022-09-16 19:10 +0200
          Re: long-standing bugs and tar pits <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2022-09-18 09:20 +0200
          Re: long-standing bugs and tar pits Jonathan Dowland <jmtd@debian.org> - 2022-09-21 08:10 +0200
        Re: long-standing bugs and tar pits (was: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?) Jonathan Dowland <jmtd@debian.org> - 2022-09-21 08:10 +0200
  Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community? Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org> - 2022-09-16 22:10 +0200
    Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community? The Wanderer <wanderer@fastmail.fm> - 2022-09-16 22:50 +0200
    Re: How to make a positive impact by contributing Diederik de Haas <didi.debian@cknow.org> - 2022-09-17 18:10 +0200

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