Debian and GNU maintenance, was Re: BitKeeper licence critic

[MJ Ray]

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

There are three questions there.  At least indicate which one you are
answering, even if you will not answer them all.

> >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.

You complained about the volume of email you receive.  The debian BTS is a
useful filter through the package maintainer.  Bugs are forwarded to the
original author where appropriate.  Are you saying that you are not getting
bug reports that you would like?  I suggest you take that up with Erik.

> I am restructuring my programs frequently. [...]

Irrelevant peacock strut.

> 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.

Maybe your propsed algorithm was infeasible?  Previous comments from the
bugs list pointed here suggest that there was no realistic implementation
offered and no convincing case made.  Indeed, it appears that the discussion
happened in an obscure newsgroup rather than on the correct list.  Pretty
much the same as this discussion of debian and cdrecord is on the wrong
list...

-- 
MJR