[Mageia-discuss] Mandriva breakage warning *** important ***

[Michael scherer]

On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 10:04:06PM +0100, Juergen Harms wrote:
> I perfectly agree with what you say, and I agree that this list is
> suffering from an excessive amount of messages.

Well, you agree, yet you seems to disagree with my reasoning :/

I do not say there is too much messages in general. I say that we must 
not be seen as "ex mandriva" for a question of reputation that we do not 
want to carry.

> Formally: I forwarded an urgent warning of common interest to
> colleagues and used the only channel available - no "discussion"
> about Mandriva at all. What - quote - "Mandriva mailing list" do you
> refer to?

https://ml.mandriva.net/wws/info/newbie
https://ml.mandriva.net/wws/info/expert

You can get archives of the list here : 
http://lists.mandriva.com/

> You did not get the point:
> 1. Installing the latest updates from Mandriva threatens to make
> people lose substantial time

The update have been removed, and symlink have been added
according to the bug report :
https://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=61941

> 2. The Mandriva forum - the proper place to broadcast such a warning
> - is down

No. at least not at this moment and from here. It was even upgraded.
 
And even if it was down, I do not think this list is here to palliate 
Mandriva lack of infrastructure.

> 3. The large majority of people on this Mageia list use Mandriva and
> are concerned by this issue.

Well,  
1) not everybody use Mandriva
2) not everybody use Mandriva 2010.1
3) not everybody use Mandriva 2010.1 with the default set of mirror
4) not everybody use Mandriva 2010.1 with the default set of mirror without
reading forums, cooker ml or without knowing what is going.

And the fact is that you are expressing exactly the sterotype that I think we should
avoid because it would hurt our reputation, ie seeing us mainly as "Mandriva users" 
despites having no data, that's just a supposition ( likely true, but yet 
unproven ).
 
If we start to act this way and see ourselves as Mandriva users, then others people
outside of the community will see us like this too. And when we will start to speak 
of Mageia, they will only remember "oh, but they are mandriva users".
Because the image you have of your community is the one you send to others.

So if we want to be seen as something else than Mandriva users, if we really want
our independance, we need to act accordingly. And the sooner we start, the sooner 
it will have a impact, and so the better it is.

You know, changes mind take time.
People still talk to me of mandrake, 5 years after the distribution changed 
 name. So if we want to be seen as different, I see no reason to not start now.

And we need to be seen as different, because we need to overcome Mandriva bad 
reputation ( like this update, for example, or the general bad mood due
to various budget cut etc ). The question is not if the reputation is deserved 
or not ( because I think it is not, at least not for everything ). But the 
fact is it exist, and that I think we want to avoid it.

> So ??? Do you really expect that I just watch smilingly how people
> whom I estimate and who devote a tremendous amount of time to build
> Mageia risk to waste their time?

Well, so far, the people who devote a tremendous amount of time are either 
perfectly able to manage the problem, or do not use Mandriva 2010.1 with the
default set of mirrors without knowing what happens.
 
At least, I am, and I think every possible people who devote a lot of time 
at this moment I can think of to fall in one of this 2 category.

So have no fear, we can manage. You cannot decide to fork a distribution without 
at least some basic survival skills on Linux based system.

> I understand that doing things in an organised way is essential, but
> following principles blindly is just as bad has not considering
> principles at all!

That's not a question of organisation or principle. I have 
given what I think to be a constructed reasoning, but maybe there is lots
of things that I think obvious that are not for you, sorry about that. 

Yes, and I know you wanted to help. That's even one of the first thing I said.

But I think it would help more to really see us as separate from Mandriva. 
I cannot force people, but I think I can at least try to convince.

-- 
Michael Scherer