[Mageia-dev] Qt-based software unusable under XFCE since almost 2 days

[Wolfgang Bornath]

2012/2/20 Michael Scherer <misc at zarb.org>:
> Le dimanche 19 février 2012 à 12:19 +0000, Païou a écrit :
>> Oliver Burger <oliver.bgr at ...> writes:
>>
>> > I don't see the reason for this answer.
>> > Michael is just trying to make sure, we don't have a unmaintained major DE.
>> > Now, some maybe a bit harsh words on the developer mailing list - this
>> > is no user support list or forum or whatever - are far better, then
>> > having something like xfce unmaintained.
>> > After all, what makes users run away: some not all that courteous mails
>> > on the -dev ml, whose existence they may or may not be aware of or a
>> > perhaps buggy, not updated, unmaintained desktop?
>> > And if we keep a whole DE unmaintained in the repos, what does that say
>> > about overall package quality?
>> >
>> > Oliver
>> >
>> >
>> OK, you are right. Sorry.
>> I wish ardently that Xfce remains maintained.
>
> I guess lots of people do. But history shown this is not enough.
>
> Let's suppose we keep xfce, despites being unmaintained. When people
> report bugs, they will have no or few answers. They will not like and
> complain. Maybe more than with a maintainer, maybe they will not care.
>
> When there will be bugs, no one will step to fix them. So people who try
> this will either say "this DE is buggy", or "this distribution is
> buggy".
> Then, likely sooner or later, someone will say "the DE work fine on
> AnotherDistribution", so people will think "the distribution is buggy"
> and switch to AnotherDistribution.
>
> While the outcome look the same ( ie, people leaving because there is no
> package, or leaving because it is not working ), in one case, they will
> switch by thinking "the distribution is not having what I want, but the
> rest was working" and will not badmouth us. In the other case, they will
> think "the distribution is buggy", and complain.
>
> So how ending like this would help us in the long run ?
>
> Maybe that's just me, but each time I mentioned "I am doing package for
> Mandriva" in the past 5 years, people kept explaining me that they faced
> some bug dating back to mandrake 7.0 time, and that they switched
> distributions and how they now live in a world filled with pink pony
> giving them candy, yadayadayada. Besides being demotivating for me
> ( cause my time travel machine is still not working ), this was hurting
> the promotion of Mandriva.
>
> Did someone ever heard "fedora is bad because they didn't ship Xfce at
> the start". I never did, and I think everybody forgot it. I could surely
> give several example on all distribution of missing packages and people
> forgetting once the issue is fixed.
>
> So people are likely quicker to forget lack of packages than lack of
> quality.
>
> And if we do not have the ressources to achieve quality packages, then
> it is much more saner for us to choose the least damaging solution in
> the long term, ie removing packages.
>
> There was enough complains about Mandriva shipping buggy softwares, and
> if as a community, we cannot increase work done to fix this ( we tried,
> we even put 2 developers together to see if they mate and produce a 3rd
> one to help us ), we do not have much others choice.
>
>> For my part I participate in it as tester,
>> where from my a little bit virulent reaction.
>>
>> This place is also, I think, the only place where it is possible
>> to have a dialogue with developers.
>>  (except bugzilla, but bugzilla is more specific)
>
> There is lots of place to have a dialogue, be it on irc, in real life
> and so on. And if some of us ( and me the first ) do not go on forums on
> a frequent basis, there is various reasons that were already explained
> in the past
> ( http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.mandrake.cooker.devel/305365 ),
> so I can only direct you to my previous answers as it is likely still
> valid ( at least for me ).

>From time to time we do have different opinions especially wrt user's
POV vs. devel's POV, but this time I agree in full to all points you
made.

-- 
wobo