BUG: clamav packages badly broken

Michael Schwendt bugs.michael at gmx.net
Wed Jan 2 15:23:28 UTC 2008


On Wed, 2 Jan 2008 06:23:22 -0800, Ray Van Dolson wrote:

> On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 02:48:21PM +0100, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> > On Wed, 02 Jan 2008 06:46:35 -0600, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> > 
> > > OK ... people can argue about this until we are all blue in the face.
> > > 
> > > The real answer, however is what your customers want.
> > 
> > Fedora is not a product that is sold to customers, so by definition there
> > are no Fedora customers.
> 
> There are users however, and shouldn't it be your goal to make your
> package as useable as it can be by as many users as possible -- taking
> into account their feedback (no matter how combative it may seem to
> the maintainer)?

That's not a question that can be answered with "yes" or "no". First of
all, it's the "as many users as possible" that is too vague and makes it
difficult to answer. And secondly, if there are many users who are unhappy
with the package (and I refer to clamav as it has been in Fedora for a
long time, not specifically to EPEL, as EPEL has other requirements), why
don't any volunteers work on improving the packages? E.g. with an add-on
package for a system-wide daemon, helper scripts, patches and a task-force
that works together with the packager?

Feedback like "the clamav pkg is broken", which does not even try to
follow the short instructions in the package documentation, won't convince
the package maintainer.

It's not that the packager doesn't admit the manual configuration steps
are inconvenient. There may be other reasons (e.g. lack of time) why it is
still like that, and clamav add-on packages demonstrate how to set up
services on top of the base clamav packages. There is no bugzilla ticket
which clearly makes it a primary goal to improve/enhance/change the
packages in well-defined ways. User satisfaction is not tracked anywhere.
Every few months somebody tries to execute a non-executable script or
ignores the documentation. And meanwhile, nobody else contributes any
patches or co-maintainership. The packager is a volunteer like lots of the
other packagers. In case of severe disagreement between him and what some
people claim is a large portion of the clamav users it really may need
somebody from FESCo to look into it. So, please start filing tickets,
point out your concerns, get status updates from the maintainer, ...

> Even if you don't consider "users" customers, the effects are the same.
> People will go elsewhere to fufill their need.  And a packager that
> says "whoop dee doo I don't care" maybe isn't the best maintainer for
> that package. :)

With all due respect, but that paragraph above is only cheap talk IMO,
which isn't helpful at all.




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