hplip: hp-toolbox advertising?

[David Zeuthen]

On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 21:18 -0600, Bernard Johnson wrote:
> David Zeuthen wrote:
> >> Where are your bug reports to them?  Your feature requests?  Have you
> >> even interacted with the hplip guys before?
> > 
> > No, I'm not the hplip package owner in any distribution and I just came
> > across this when looking at doing the ACL support things in HAL for
> > SANE. I'll probably try to talk to them, I was just shocked we actually
> > ship these bits.
> 
> I expect you will be pleased with their openness and responsiveness to
> making things right.  Which is exactly why I queried if you had
> expressed your concerns to them.

Good to hear. I'm still not the hplip package maintainer though.

> Some people are idealistic in this regard.  It does not affect their
> work, performance, etc. regarding the product.  I certainly have an
> idealistic flair, but tend to very much be a realist and very pragmatic
> when things must get done or must work.
> 
> RH/Fedora (employees) still tend to be the primary motivators for making
> these sorts of decisions.

I think it's exactly this difference in point of view that is causing
all these heavy flame wars on this and other Fedora lists. In one camp
we have idealistic people that likes to address root problems. In the
other camp we have pragmatic people who will settle for a "quick fix"
even though it means compromising with quality (and not realizing that a
"quick fix" is actually causing the root problem to never get fixed).
Both groups describe each other as being counterproductive. Both groups
knows tricks to get their agenda implemented.

So I honestly don't know what the answer for Fedora is, I wish I did,
but I'm pretty sure that the current state of affairs is not healthy for
the project. And I don't see things getting better, only worse. As Jef
said in a thoughtful mail a while back: Fedora is growing up, soon it
will have hair in funny places. Or something like that.

I can only hope that we can grow a strong contributor base in the Fedora
Project, one that is willing to attack really hard problems without
compromising / throwing bandaids at the problem at hand. One that
doesn't give up even when the flames on fedora-devel gets high. Because
we got to have goals.

     David