Maintainer Responsibilities

[David Tardon]

On Thu, Jun 04, 2009 at 07:23:05AM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> Steven M. Parrish wrote:
>
>> Many people have mentioned that it is not right to ask the users to 
>> file their bug reports upstream.  I ask why not? 
>
> Let me summarize what I already wrote elsewhere in this thread:
> * Users aren't necessarily developers.
> * Users aren't necessarily interested in getting involved upstream.
> * Users are reporting bugs against your product (your package in  
> Fedora), not against upstream's work (somebody else's product).
>
>
> Let me try an analogy: How do you handle defects/malfunctions with your  
> car?
>
> You'll visit your car dealer/a garage and report the issue to them.  
> You'll expect them to identify the problem and to take appropriate steps  
> to solve your issue.

Let me try another analogy: How do you handle health problems?

You'll visit your doctor. You'll expect him to identify the problem and
to take appropriate steps to solve your issue--that may well be just him
sending you to a specialist. Would you expect your doctor to serve as a
proxy between you and the specialist? Or even substitute you for
checkup? I wouldn't.

> You don't expect them to direct you to the car's  
> manufacturer or a component manufacturer and to discuss technical  
> details you have no knowledge about with them ("Is the stuttering engine  
> cause by triac 7 in a component A you haven't heard about before" or by  
> the hall sensor in component B you also haven't heard about before).
>

Who spoke about technical details? Have you ever been asked to look into
the source code of some project? I don't think so. An upstream developer
can ask better/more detailed questions than a packager, but that's only
to be expected.

Btw, I'm really interested to hear why answering questions of an
upstream developer through a packager as a proxy is better than
answering the same questions directly...

David