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

Mon Feb 20 13:41:12 CET 2012

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
+