FreeBSD asking contributors to fix their opinions - is it official?

[Marc Lehmann]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2020 at 01:13:08PM +0000, Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve at sohara.org> wrote:
> > regards to regulating opinions - if this list is not the right list to
> > ask this question, I would be extremely happy if people could direct me
> > ot a more appropriate forum - I didn't find anything that seemed more
> > appropriate, so I am posting to this list. Apologies if this was wrong.
> 
> 	Not a bad place to start.

Thanks, adamw since then told me it's the wrong place, though, and
portmgr at is the right place for my question (and he indicated that he
doesn't intend to clarify any of his claims).

> 	There are no patches in the port so 'FreeBSD' has not 'fixed'
> anything. The only FreeBSD addition appears to be a stub Stability.pm. At
> any rate it is the port maintainer's responsibility to create patches not
> 'FreeBSD'.

Maybe that's what he is refering to. I don't know what the stub does, but
it seems ot be a rather heavy-handed approach, as the module can already
be silenced completely via the PERL_CANARY_STABILITY_DISABLE environment
variable (since it's very first version), so this claim:

   The original Canary::Stability contains system checks that produce
   warnings that must be ignored (and which would be harmful if acted
   upon).

Seems to be pretty much in line (made-up claims of harmful behaviour and
a weird solution to something that is already solved).

In any case, disabling any warnings (or, more corretcly any *output*) is
fully supported, specifically with regards to downstream distributions,
which then take on the responsibility of providing a working combination
(i.e. "support responsibility", which is what FreeBSD does anyway by
providing a high-quality OS distribution).

I'd also like to state that replacing it by a stub, of course, is fine
with me, as any compatibilitx checks can be done by the port.

Looking at https://www.freshports.org/devel/p5-Canary-Stability/, I
find a lot of false/completely made-up claims that seem to be aimed at
denigrating my work:

   it also advises users to switch to an unmaintained fork provided by the
   author)

That's simply made up and the opposite of the truth (I fully maintain that
fork, which is used by a number of products). This claim is also made
repeateadly.

   including instructing users to uninstall Perl and install one from 2015

Certainly not what it says. It merely points out when versions are not
officially supported by me.

   Other features of this module include requiring keyboard input.

Also not true, there are multiple ways to avoid keyboard input - the
standard ExtUtils::MakeMaker method that a lot of CPAN modules use and
various environment variables, all designed to be able to automate things.

   As time goes on, the uselessness of this module only increases.

That's at best personal opinion - Canary::Stability is the module that
nowadays enables me to contribute perl modules at all. Without it, CPAN
wouldn't have AnyEvent, EV, IO::AIO and a lot of other modules - my
personal life has increased dramatically since I use it and the amount of
user questions about support status that I receive has practically gone to
zero.

Looking at these commit entries (I didn't see it before), it looks like a
port maintainer with a personal vendetta, who is not above smearing FUD on
other projects.

The worrying aspect is that he claims he is doing it in the name of the
FreeBSD project and that the project condones him doing it.

> > If I read this correctly, he is acting in a capacity officially
> > representing FreeBSD in that matter and seems to indicate that the FreeBSD
> > project needs to police what it perceives as personal opinions. In fact,
> > it seems to be the most urgent and pressing matter, as nothing else of
> > substance was written.
> 
> 	I think someone is using his address to be a PITA.

That's an interesting thought that I didn't think of.

However, the fact that the "adamw" user makes similar statements in the
ports commit history since 2013 makes this less likely, as someone would
have to have taken over his account address for a very long time indeed.

Certainly possible, of course.

Anyway, thanks for this advice, I will try to act carefully and take this
into account.

-- 
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