Maintainer Responsibilities

[Ralf Corsepius]

Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Wed, 03 Jun 2009 14:06:45 +0200, Ralf wrote:
> 
>> I consider users (esp. bug reporters) not to be "the dumb pigs eating 
>> the hog wash they get for free", or "clueless comsumer masses" aborbing 
>> anything they don't pay for with money, but them to be the foundation of 
>> your work and them to be valuable business partners, paying in 
>> immaterial payment (e.g. feedback, such as bug reports).
> 
> That's an idealistic [over-simplified] point of view which I don't want to
> agree with. 
Well, whether it's idealistic or not is irrelevant. It's one of the 
foundations of open source.

Or less abstract:
I stopped reporting bugs against Fedora's evolution, because its @RH 
maintainer preferred to close bugs and tried to push me around to 
upstream. Wrt. evolution, I was an ordinary user and am not interested 
in getting further involved.

As simple as it is: I felt sufficiently pissed of by this guy to leave 
him and his upstream alone, ... so be it, he wanted it this way.

There are other packages and packagers (noteworthy many of the @RH) who 
exhibit the same "push reporters around" behavior.

So is still anybody wondering why Fedora is permanently lacking people? 
This is one cause.

Now combine this with the "report bugs" phrases certain people tend to 
reiterate? ... Experiences, such as the one I encountered with the 
evolution maintainer, are the cause why at least some people sense a 
foul taste when listening to them.

Ralf