Bug#415247: closed by Alexander Schmehl <tolimar@debian.org> (Re: FW: bug wmaker?)

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sun, Mar 18, 2007 at 09:03:14AM +0100, Christian Perrier wrote:
> Quoting Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton (lkcl at lkcl.net):
> > it's ok - the point has been made.
> > 
> > there is no "hijacking".
> > 
> > and the bug is in the attitude of the exim4 developers and the exim4
> > maintainers, not in the software.
> 
> 
> I'm subscribed to exim4's PTS for about 3 years now and I have never
> seen any evidence of arrogant and non listening attitude from the
> exim4 package mainainers.
 
 ok.

 i missed out a couple of things.

 the first exim bugreport that i sent was not dealt with because the
 maintainer at the time basically said "that's too complicated for me to
 deal with".  i told him that if that was the case, then he should quit
 and let someone else with more intelligence deal with maintaining exim.
 
 some time after this, the exim maintainers group was created.
 
 some time after _that_ - a few years later - something along the lines
 of the suggestions that i had made in the bugreport were incorporated
 into exim4's config layout (@DEBCONF_....)


 the second bugreport that i sent was not taken up because the maintainer
 disagreed with the use of the word "virtual" in both the article and
 its accompanying exim4 configuration improvements.
 
 "virtual" mapping is a fundamental principle of computer science, and,
 not only that, the article which describes the extension to exim4 has
 been around for quite some time and is written by a respected community
 member.

 the third issue was dismissed out-of-hand by misunderstandings and
 miscommunications regarding the issue.  it was first believed (due to
 my misunderstandings and inability to communicate correctly because
 i was under pressure to sort out the problem), to be a standard and
 well-known bug caused by the cyrus22 debian HOWTO instructions, which
 the exim4 developers are absolutely sick to the back teeth of telling
 debian users about, time and time again.

 attempts made by me to understand and track down this issue under
 extreme pressured circumstances of massive amounts of incoming spam
 due to the bug were treated with derision and filed under /dev/null.
 
 

> I personnally consider the exim4 package well maintained with
> maintainers listening to bug reports, opened to discussion 

 nope.
 
 the bugs i raised were closed, effective immediate, without discussion.
 

> The only thing that's missing them is more manpower to even better
> deal with bugs, probably clean out the BTS and be able to conduct more
> disruptive changes if they're needed. This is indeed a very common
> problem for most core packages in Debian but there are many packages
> which need more manpower much more than exim4.

 no - they _don't_ necessarily need more manpower - they do however need
 more intelligence.

 intelligence is the key.
 
 more manpower usually means more intercommunication, and less actually
 gets achieved.

 you _know_ this: it's a _basic_ rule of project development.

 
 and - in particular, and this is the main reason why i am writing
 (again) to you to say this:
 
 exim4 is the _default_ debian mailer.

 it is therefore a very very _important_ core package.

 think about this: why has postfix not been picked as the default
 debian mailer?

 

> I find this bug report pretty offensive to exim4 maintainers who are
> doing are tremendous job.

 they probably are.  i don't see any evidence of that.

 when i do, i'll let you _and_ them _and_ everyone else know.
 
 i promise you that, 100%.


-- 
--
lkcl.net - mad free software computer person, visionary and poet.
--