It's open source: if things don't get fixed, it's because no user cares enough to fix it. I'm certainty not wasting my time on that, nobody uses ext3 anymore!
You are as empowered to fix this as anybody else, if it presents a real problem for you.
You are as empowered to fix this as anybody else, if it presents a real problem for you.
I’m getting sick and tired of this argument. It’s very user unfriendly
Do you work in software? If yes, do you own a component? Have you tried using this argument with your colleagues that have no idea about your component?
Of course they theoretically are empowered to fix the bug, but that doesn’t make it easier. They may have no idea about how filesystem internal. Or they may be just users and have no programming background at all
Open source doesn't work for you. You can't demand that it do things you want: you have to push and justify them yourself, and hopefully you find other people along the way who want the same things and can help you.
I taught myself to program as a teenager trying to fix bugs in Linux. If I could do it, anybody can. That's what makes it empowering.
But being open source doesn't mean people shouldn't or can't just say "this is bad" or "don't use x" or even "this X feature doesn't work when using Y" (now If what they are saying isn't true, sure we should call them out)
It's normal and in fact I think it should be encouraged, as not everyone can be aware of potential problems they could have with a piece of OSS that is already known in some obscure dev mailing list. The more people are informed and aware of potential issues, the less they will be surprised and complain about it when they start using it.
(Fwiw I love btrfs, and I think it's very reliable)
Please don’t put words in other peoples mouth.
If nobody cares that much, maybe deprecate the tool, then?
Also, just because it's Open Source (TM) doesn't mean developers will accept any patch regardless of its quality. Like everything, FOSS is 85% people, 15% code.
> You are as empowered to fix this as anybody else, if it presents a real problem for you.
I have reported many bugs in Open Source software. If I had the time to study code and author a fix, I'd submit the patch itself, which I was able to do, a couple of times.
If you think that's the right thing to do, you're as free as anybody else to send documentation patches. I doubt anybody would argue with you here, but who knows :)
> Also, just because it's Open Source (TM) doesn't mean developers will accept any patch regardless of its quality.
Of course not. If you want to make a difference, you have to put in the work. It's worth it IMHO.
That won't do anything. Instead I can start a small commotion by sending a small request (to the mailing lists) to deprecate the tool, which I don't want to do. Because I'm busy. :)
Also, I don't like commotions, and prefer civilized discussions.
> Of course not. If you want to make a difference, you have to put in the work. It's worth it IMHO.
Of course. This is what I do. For example, I have a one liner in Debian Installer. I had a big patch in GDM, but after coordinating with the developers, they decided to not merge the fix + new feature, for example.
Surely you were given some justification as to why they didn't want to merge it? I realize sometimes these things are intractable, but in my experience that's rare... usually things can iterate towards a mutually agreeable solution.
GTK has (or had) a sliding infoline widget, which is used to show notifications. GDM used it for password related prompts. It actually relayed PAM messages to that widget.
We were doing mass installations backed by an LDAP server which had password policies, including expiration enabled.
That widget had a bug, prevented it displaying a new message when it was in the middle of an animation, which effectively ate messages related to LDAP (Your password will expire in X days, etc.).
Also we needed a keyboard selector in that window, which was absent.
I gave heads up to the GDM team, they sent a “go ahead” as a reply. I have written an elaborate patch, which they rejected and wanted a simpler one. I iterated the way they wanted, they said it passes the muster and will be merged.
Further couple of mails never answered. I’m basically ghosted.
But the merge never came, and I moved on.