Debian and GNU maintenance, was Re: BitKeeper licence critic

[Joerg Schilling]

>From: MJ Ray <markj at cloaked.freeserve.co.uk>

>Joerg Schilling <schilling at fokus.gmd.de> wrote:
>> The Debian Bug list is badly managed (at least for cdrecord) and it does
>> not help to keep cdrecord bug-free. Tehy never removed remarks for bugs that
>> never exists but are a result of missunderstood or unread documentation.

>Did they accept your claim that these bugs "never exist[ed]"?  If so, have
>you asked the maintainer andersee at debian.org why the bugs are not closed? 
>If there was no answer, have you asked debian-qa about it?  Now, maybe I'm
>missing something, but the BTS doesn't show any entries from you on any of
>the important bugs, nor on a random sample of normal bugs.

I did this several times during the last years and finally succeeded 
on December 31st 2001. 

>Also, I note that there are bugs filed against your documentation.  Maybe it
>is not as good as it could be.  Have you considered getting someone else to
>review and improve it?

If people find bugs, they should write me a mail.

>> I send him a description for an algorithm that fiyes the problem and would
>> allow somebody who knows the program to create a fix in less than 3 hours.

>We're only getting one side of the story here, I know, but what was the
>response?  You've already hinted elsewhere that the fix would take severe
>internal restructuring.  I assume other things would break, at least
>temporarily.

I am restructuring my programs frequently. This is the only way to keep 
something like e.g. star maintainable for 20 years (1982-2002). As the bug 
description was filed to them at least 3 years ago GNU make should have been
restructured meahwhile or it is not actively maintained anymore.

Jörg

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