Bug#835533: dasher: Please package Dasher 5.0 beta

[Adrian Bunk]

(Cc-ing ftpmaster, debian-devel)

On Tue, Oct 04, 2016 at 07:05:09PM +0200, Emilio Pozuelo Monfort wrote:
> (Cc-ing debian-a11y)
> 
> Hi,

Hi Emilio,

> On 30/09/16 13:03, Andreas Henriksson wrote:
> > While the patch would solve the RC bug and get dasher back into
> > testing, I'm hesitant to assist in uploading it because the
> > question "Do we *want* to ship dasher in it current state?" is
> > not something your patch addresses. If we do get dasher back
> > into testing we'll likely have to also support it for the
> > lifetime of stretch. If we're struggling now to find people
> > willing to invest any time into dasher maintenance how will
> > we be able to make any guarantees about being able to support
> > it for the lifetime of stretch?
> > 
> > Until we have a somewhat enthusiastic maintainer it's probably
> > better to make dasher available "on the side" rather than in
> > the main distribution IMHO. Could you tell me your view on
> > this and what your motivation for posting the patch was to better
> > help me understand your situation?
> 
> dasher is a critical piece of software for some people who couldn't use their
> computer without it. Other than this FTBFS, I don't think it's in a bad state
> (unless I missed something). So I'd say we should fix this bug and ship it, or
> let the accessibility team (co-)maintain this (as they do with Orca) and give us
> a hand with it, if they want to do that.

you are too late.

Andreas did not apply my trivial patch to fix the RC bug.[1]

Even though Andreas was worried about noone being available to maintain 
dasher,[2] he did not follow my suggestion to send a WNPP bug.[3]

Andreas succeeded in getting dasher removed from Debian,[4]
conveniently not mentioning that he could have fixed the
"has not been part of testing" by applying my trivial fix.

Andreas claiming "there's noone willing to commit to actually taking 
care of the package" in the removal request is also quite at odds with
him being completely silent on my suggestion to file a WNPP bug.

The ftp admins were fast enough to not give anyone a realistic chance to 
react to the removal request.

It is a problem for users when software that is in one stable release 
disappears in the next stable release, and I guess dasher can forever 
serve as a good example of critical software having been removed from 
unstable without a single good reason.

I am also personally unhappy that creating a patch for the RC bug
triggered removal from unstable instead of getting the fix applied.

> Cheers,
> Emilio

cu
Adrian

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/811640#24
[2] https://bugs.debian.org/835533#15
[3] https://bugs.debian.org/835533#25
[4] https://bugs.debian.org/839735

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