[Mageia-discuss] Suggestions

Sun Oct 24 04:40:26 CEST 2010

On Sun, 24 Oct 2010, Michael Scherer wrote:
+
+> I think I demonstrated in the past that constant friendliness toward
+> users is not one of my distinctive characteristics. 
+
+Well, that might have been fine as a Mandriva employee, but as part of a 
+community distro I personally consider you attitude out of place and not 
+in line with the spirit of Mageia.
+
+> If writing a decent description is easy and almost effortless, and if
+> sending a email is easy, then what is difficult into doing both ?
+
+You don't even need to write a description, usually you can just 
+copy&paste it from the web site of the software.
+Thing is, if the packager does it it's a 1 minute job, if some user 
+emails it to him, the packager still has to check the description and 
+then paste it into the spec file, so it saves no time at all.
+
+> We could rely on the packagers for everything, but 1) that doesn't scale
+> 2) that doesn't work.
+
+With all due respect, but when talking about a simple description for 
+each package this is nonsense.
+
+> And that doesn't work because packagers ( at least me ) most of the time
+> do not read descriptions, so they do not see something is wrong.
+
+What descriptions do you not read?
+The ones of Fedora spec files you simply copy&paste?
+
+> Managing and knowing softwares is our duty, which place use in a
+> position far away from someone that discover the system.
+
+Exactly because the packager knows the software he/she packages, it's 
+easiest for her/him to add a suitable description.
+
+> Kde had 3 majors releases since I started to use Linux, so of course 
+> the packages descriptions change, yet I didn't read them since years. 
+
+I don't understand your point, you surely didn't use the same spec 
+files for most kde4 packages as for kde3?
+
+> So again, why does people do not send improved description ?
+
+Finding who the correct packager is, isn't trivial at all, the changelog 
+often contains various names and the Mdv web site packager list often 
+doesn't match the names in the spec file.
+
+I tell you what:
+
+If I will have full access to all spec files as a Mageia packager, I 
+will myself add descriptions to many packages if others don't mind, I 
+don't have a problem with that as long as I can do it directly myself, 
+without having to contact each fellow packager first.
+
+But if I have to find the email of the packager for each package that 
+has a bad or missing description then I won't bother, that would be a 
+waste of everyone's time.
+
+