Md at debian.org

tales of a debian maintainer

Is Debian still fun?

Short summary: #255324 was reported against my package inn2. Some people think it's a bug, some don't. Being myself in the second camp, I closed it. Some people did not agree with this, and much silliness ensued.

I fear that it is not obvious to all parts involved that the issue has never been adding a one-line patch for a commented configuration directive in an obscure config file, but the principle of maintainers being allowed to decide if something reported against their packages is a bug or not.

Yesterday, I discussed this on IRC with some other developers. While many have been civil, some have repeatedly insulted me because of a technical disagreement. People who have been in the project for long enough that they really should know better.

After this, I decided to stop trying to close the bug and for the time being keep it open and tagged wontfix. I hope that the people involved in the BTS harassment now feel that this fight was worth it. It was for me, because in the process I have learned a few things.

First, that some developers think that in the case of a technical disagreement the correct process is to play the BTS game and recourse to mobbing instead of asking the Technical Committee for a decision, as established in our Constitution.

Second, that the Debian community may not be a fun place anymore. I suppose that this has to be expected when a prominent developer keeps referring to people who do not share his position of DFSG-revisionism as "warez traders", but it is still sad to acknowledge.

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This is the blog of Marco d'Itri.

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