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Re: Are users of Debian software members of the Debian community?

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On Thu, Sep 15, 2022 at 06:17:02PM -0400, Chuck Zmudzinski wrote:
> To put it in the most brief terms, I come to that conclusion based on what
> many people are telling me: Debian maintainers cannot fix bugs in software
> because they are just volunteers.

That statement is incorrect. People _can_ and _do_ fix a lot of bugs when
they have time. There are a lot of DDs/DMs/contributors fixing a lot of bugs on a daily basis
for that matter. You could consider taking a look at -devel-changes ML if you'd like to.

> That explains why I almost always am at
> least annoyed by one or two bugs when running Debian software, and sometimes
> after an update the computer is totally unusable until I can debug it and find
> the fix, because volunteers don't have the time to do it for me. That is what
> most everyone on debian-user is telling me. Do you disagree with what they
> say?

Well, sometimes bugs do sit around for a bit, yes; but you are presenting it in
a much way that it makes the situation look worse than it actually is.
The resolution is quick quite a few times (to my
experience and I am a DD myself) but yes, sometimes they do sit around for a while.

In that case, it is nice to file good bug reports (as Andy told you) and if you have a
patch, that's even better. You could consider to ping maintainers after a week or so if
you think it is important. And if you think something very critical is broken, you could
even raise the severity of the bug, I don't see a lot of problem with it.

And yes, sometimes the maintainers of a package _can_ be AFK too, this is volunteer work
after all. Someone might be on a vacation, or in a conference, or travelling, or busy with RL
and seeing your BR on an immediate basis isn't a possibility.

> Also, in my experience, these bugs and catastrophic failures caused by updates
> of a supposedly stable release happened *much* less often when I used software
> that is written by paid developers.

Fine, but what do you propose to do here? Pay all DDs for fixing bugs? Who will manage the finances/funding?
What if a bug report is critical and someone is unwilling to pay for a fix? What if someone needs a break for
whatever reason? -- have you considered to give a thought about these?

Also, I'd like to say that calling out Debian contributors with "Hey, you are doing a horrible job" is
a negative thing for us to hear as well. You said that you got a few negative replies, which you are annoyed
with, this goes both ways, really.

-- 
Best,
Nilesh

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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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