X.Org 7.0 port?

[Jeremy Chadwick]

On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 03:14:24PM -0500, Mark Linimon wrote:
> 2. You have ignored the point that kris and I and anholt are trying to
>    make, that he is not obligated to fix your problem.  Since he, like
>    everyone else, is only human, the more you attempt to bully him into
>    doing so, the less he is going to feel motivated to spend his own
>    free time doing so.
>
> {snip}
> 
> It's fair to say "xyz doesn't work".  It isn't fair to say "abc _must_
> fix xyz".  This model simply does not work with volunteers.

Please read what I say below with an open mind, and DO NOT TAKE IT
PERSONALLY!  I'm just discussing something based on my experiences.

There is a very uncomfortable and downright destructive attitude
that "voluntary" open-source advocates have -- the attitude is
represented via one of the following catch-phrases:

"Because I do this for free, you have no right to complain."
"You have the source, so fix the problem yourself."
"Send patches, thanks."
"We have lives/jobs, this isn't what we spend all of our time doing."

I'll be blunt: I absolutely loathe these responses.  And I say that
with sincerity towards you, Mark (and Kris too!) -- I like you both,
you're very cool, and I do have incredible respect for both of you.
All the work and effort you guys put is in astounding, and there is
no way *I* could do it myself.  So I don't want to sound like I'm
disrespecting either of you personally.  It's just a matter of
opinion here, that's all.  I try to give back what I take (from
the FreeBSD world), as I'm sure you both know from my recent mails
to you both (still waiting on sending you guys some free disks!)

As someone who maintains ports myself, writes software, and has
provided a 100% advertising-free hosting service since the mid-90s, I
can tell you that doing things for free __does not__ remove a person
from having to take responsibility for something *they chose* to
involve themselves with.

I said "writes software" but I DO NOT release my software/code into
the general public, SOLELY BECAUSE I do not want to provide support
for it.  That's my choice, and the way my mind works is like this:

* The software is my responsibility, open-source or not, and I have
  to take responsibility for it because I am the one who chose to
  release it into the world (much like parenting...)
* Bugs in the software are my problem and my responsibility, regardless
  of if the code is open-source or not.
* I should not *expect* others to do my work for me (patches), nor
  should I expect others to completely reverse-engineer my code to
  try and figure out how to solve a problem when it's easier to just
  inform me of it and let me fix it.

I **DO** choose to take on the responsibility of maintaining the
www/suphp, www/cgiwrap, and games/nethack ports.  Are these programs
my code?  Nope, but any problems my ports cause other FreeBSD users
or administrators **are** my problem.  I take my PRs VERY seriously,
and I urge people to submit them + contact me.  I take part in the
mailing lists for these softwares, and do my best to communicate
issues/problems with the actual author(s) of the code, so they are
kept in the loop.  I try VERY hard to be prompt about my responses
(within 24 hours).

When I can't do these things and meet my own self-set standards, I
feel awful.

Why do I feel horrible?  Because I've been exactly where those users
are: feeling irritated that something isn't working how it should,
and that no one cares about their problem.  I cannot count how
many pieces of large, mainstream software I've reported bugs in
which go either unheeded or result in insults from the maintainers.
For sake of example, I've lost a lot of respect for the Apache team
because of this problem -- I'm thankful for guys like Ken Coar, who
despite all the issues, are amazingly friendly and helpful, and of
course FreeBSD's Clement Laforet, who maintains quite possibly the
most important port (from a sysadmin point of view) in the FreeBSD
ports tree there is.

I completely and totally understand the justification behind the
"we do this for free, so fix it yourself" attitude -- I just think
that it's a destructive and very non-open-source attitude to
have (one of the biggest problems/caveats with open-source today).

But please remember: no matter how rough it gets for you guys, and
no matter who has what opinion, I always have appreciated your
efforts.  Don't let my difference in opinion change how you are or
get you down -- it's just a different view that I have, that's all.

Good times.  :-)

-- 
| Jeremy Chadwick                                 jdc at parodius.com |
| Parodius Networking                        http://www.parodius.com/ |
| UNIX Systems Administrator                   Mountain View, CA, USA |
| Making life hard for others since 1977.                             |