Re: [Bitcoin-development] Linux packaging letter

[Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net>]

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Yeah, if anyone wants to make the letter more digestable please do propose
an alternative, although by this point it's probably not worth it as people
have already signed.

FWIW, Gregory is right that my original draft was much more brusque. The
pain in the packaging relationship travels both ways. I have in the past
wasted a lot of time due to bogus packaging applied by non-expert packagers
that broke things. In fact the project I was a part of adopted a policy of
automatically closing bug reports from people who were using distributor
packages (any distro) because the quality was so inconsistent and so many
subtle bugs were introduced.

If packagers hear upstreams cry about packaging a lot, I think you should
keep an open mind that some of them probably know what they're talking
about. We really shouldn't have to beg and cajole here. Saying "we have our
reasons and we want you to stop" should be enough.




On Wed, Jul 24, 2013 at 5:19 AM, Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 7:35 PM, zooko <zooko@zooko.com> wrote:
> > I think some
> > package maintainers might perceive this version of the letter as
> high-handed --
> > telling someone else how to do their job -- and they might not notice the
> > actual facts included in the letter explaining why Bitcoin really *is*
> > different than a lot of software.
>
> Bummer, because this was a explicit consideration while writing it and
> a concern several people had with the initial draft Mike did.
>
> We're very much aware that upstreams frequently cry (wolf) at the
> mutilation of their unique and precious snowflake.
>
> The intention was that second paragraph acknowledging the many good
> motivations for the existing norms and the third paragraph talking
> about consensus systems would address these concerns— showing that we
> aren't totally clueless, and pointing out that we have an actually
> unusual situation. In intermediate drafts they were longer and more
> elaborate, but we were struggling against length and trying to avoid
> delving into a highly technical discussion which would lose anyone who
> wasn't already very interested.
>
> We also compromised on an initial approach of "please don't package
> this at all" to "please understand first", in part at the protest of
> our gentoo package (which also bundles leveldb but hard locks it to an
> exact version in the package system with exact build flags, which is a
> sophisticated compromise which might not generalize to other
> distributors) maintainer (uh, Luke-Jr, not exactly the most
> representative sample).
>
> As a first step it's at least important to know that there is a
> concern here shared by a bunch of people. Helping talk people through
> understanding it is part of the job here.  I certainly didn't expect
> the discussion to stop with the letter but getting it out there is a
> way to start the discussion and make it more likely that we have it
> again with the next packager who comes around.
>
> I guess the first priority though is avoiding gratuitously offending
> people.  Can anyone point out any specific tweaks that would reduce
> initial bristling?
>
> On Tue, Jul 23, 2013 at 6:45 PM, Douglas Huff <dhuff@jrbobdobbs.org>
> wrote:
> > Honestly, until I read the quoted part of your response,
>
> Oh be nice. If any of this were easy it would all be _done_ already. :)
>
> There is naturally some tension when people with different priorities
> and backgrounds interact, ... I've seen a lot of upstreams run into
> disagreements with packagers the result is usually better for
> everyone.
>
>
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