2009-11-08

Things that make me angry

  • when people upload to Debian with an @ubuntu.com email address
  • even worst, if they do that when they are DDs (so with a @debian.org address)
grrr

53 comments:

Michael Banck said...

Isn't it the proper way to do if you package and upload stuff on company time?

Sandro Tosi said...

@Michael: then you'd use @canonical.com since that is the company you'd work for, not ubuntu, that's the "community" around the distro.

That's from what I know, I could care less how ubuntu is organized..

Michael Banck said...

They mostly use @canonical.com for uploads even to Ubuntu AFAIK. Though now that I look at their Linux kernel package, the changelog has @canonical.com addresses for recent uploads.

Michael Banck said...

Eh, they mostly use @ubuntu.com, I wanted to say.

jamessan said...

I don't really see why the email address they use to upload matters. As long as they're taking care of packages and doing so well, what does one piece of metadata matter?

slashdotaccount said...

jamessan:

It matters because it is an indicator of priorities and loyalties. A DD using their @debian.org address is way more likely to stick around and improve Debian than the equivalent whose loyalties lie with Ubuntu. An example is Mark Shuttleworth. He is both a DD and an Ubuntu developer. He is MIA from Debian but is very active in Ubuntu.

sandro:

It is way too late in the game to let Ubuntu cause you angst, just accept that (like Fedora, Gentoo or other distros), they are here to stay and are bigger and better than Debian. Instead, channel your anger into making Debian better; recruit new people, kick out MIA people (like Mark), work on QA, package new stuff, work on infrastructure.

Unknown said...

What does using a non-debian-nor-ubuntu address say about priorities, for those of us with fingers in many pies?

Unknown said...

@slashdotaccount Ubuntu is literally nothing without Debian, so I'd be very careful about "bigger and better than Debian" comments. I know those I ally myself with within Ubuntu view Debian as our number 1 priority - and that the only way to make Ubuntu good effectively is to target Debian first and foremost

Tom said...

What if the company policy is to use @ubuntu.com??

I guess petty bitching is the new informative blog post.

Unknown said...

A sign of priorities? What the hell? Isn't that some kind of over-interpretation?
Eventually its just a dual-distro-maintainer who struggles with different DEBEMAIL settings with different distros. And after all its not very interesting which email address is used to upload to Debian, isn't it?

Sandro Tosi said...

email address is very interesting, because it's part of how you're "presenting" the work to the Debian project. using @ubuntu.com clearly identifies what you really care about...

Unknown said...

http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=directhex%40apebox.org&comaint=yes

Clearly my priorities and presentation are focused on the storage of simians in cardboard containers

Riku Voipio said...

This is the most petty thing I've read on planet for a while. I never use my debian.org address because I already have a address somewhere else. using d.o address would only mean more addresses forwarding spam to same mailbox.

In debian we have much more real problems than what email address people use.

Sandro Tosi said...

@suihkulokki: you know that your @d.o is the official way to contact you for your Debian activities, right? and that is must forward to a working and monitored mailbox?

Unknown said...

As to your first point, Sandro, have you considered that perhaps the opposite rings true? Perhaps Ubuntu members have worked on a package in Ubuntu, and decided "man, I really care about Debian, so I want this work to be in Debian too"?

Far from their @ubuntu.com being intended as some kind of insult, it's used as some indicator that they want to cooperate with Debian - and that they've come from the world of Ubuntu to help? They don't feel ashamed about their Ubuntu involvement, so don't change to a non-Ubuntu address merely to hide it?

I've sponsored high-quality packaging from people with @ubuntu.com addresses, and will continue to do so as long as their work is of high quality.

Anonymous said...

Maybe you should get involved in the team that handles mail on debian.org. Personally I don't use my debian.org email address because of the worthless spam filtering. (No, I don't have/use an ubuntu.org one either.)

"you know that your @d.o is the official way to contact you for your Debian activities, right? and that is must forward to a working and monitored mailbox?"

Not true. Disabling the debian.org mail is perfectly acceptable. The official contact is whatever the control file says it is.

Anonymous said...

Sorry, why does it bother you so much? As long as proper work is done, where is the issue? And about non-proper work, I've seen way worse jobs done by upload with @debian.org addresses than from people with @ubuntu.com addresses.

Also, I don't use my @debian.org address since a long time neither and don't plan to unless the account gets renamed. And there are many people do good work and don't use their @debian.org address in their packages.

For a start, to give you a valid reason to do so: Some people like to do their own spam filtering. It's not that comfortable or even possible to filter properly through @debian.org. And that's only one of the reasons.

I really don't see the big difference between an @somewhere.foo address to an @ubuntu.com address. It's people like you that make the collaboration and patch-feeding-back to Debian harder, you are doing a big disservice to Debian with this kind of attitude and blogging, do you realize that?

Anonymous said...

And, about "you know that your @d.o is the official way to contact you for your Debian activities, right? and that is must forward to a working and monitored mailbox?" - neither of that is true. The official way to contact me for my Debian activities isn't my @d.o address, it's the one address listed in my packages, and it definitely must not be forwarded to a working and monitored mailbox. You can explicitly *disable* your @d.o address through ldap. If you don't believe it, go and check yourself.

Please stop spreading hatred and improper informations. Get over with your anger.

Sandro Tosi said...

@a1fie: get your feet back to the ground: *I* am "doing a big disservice to Debian"? the small percentage of ubuntu contributors getting back to Debian is so small, that they can easily ignore my blog post.

Moreover, am I not allowed to express what I think? I do not like it, and I do say it. Feel free to agree or not

full stop

Thijs said...

This is just whining. The used email address is a utility: a good way to contact the person responsible.

Yet another artificial attempt to polarise the Debian - Ubuntu relationship. What we need in the free software universe is more collaboration between projects, not less.

Unknown said...

Uploading to debian with an @ubuntu.com email? Why not? I started off working in Ubuntu, I felt that I wanted to contribute to Debian also, I applied, and became a DD.

In fact, I still have some that have my @ubuntu.com email listed as Maintainer.

http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=mez@ubuntu.com

I can understand part 2, though, even if an email is just an email.

@thijs -

Confusion said...

Some Christians get angry when I explain my atheism. Some sports fans get angry when I explain their sport doesn't interest me at all. Sometimes people get angry when I explain I'm a tourist and hardly speak the local language.

People that get angry over petty differences in opinion have a problem.

Jeff Goldschrafe said...

Argh, this guy's email address is so unprofessional, how dare he contribute his time to MY free software community!!

Tom said...

You are allowed to express your insanely petty and stupid thoughts, but don't whine when people correct you and tell you that you are wrong.

Snirp said...

Oh well, this should keep me from ever contributing to Debian. I am ok with a bit of arrogance, but this about does it. Let me know when policy or sentiment changes around here.

Benjamin Drung said...

I use my @ubuntu.com e-mail address to show that I *do* care about Debian. This address shows the Debian developers that there are *Ubuntu* developers who collaborate and contribute to Debian. A lot of work went into reducing the diffs between Debian and Ubuntu. Many of my packages can now be synced instead of merged.

I am a Debian Maintainer and no DD. So I do not have a Debian e-mail address.

Zack said...

This all just seems like tribalism but in gnulinux distro terms. Can't we just get past this pettiness and all unite around a true common enemy (Windows)? This sectarianism is harmful.

Anonymous said...

Snirp: Please don't let this one person speak for the whole distribution for you and read up about the other comments. He sees it from the wrong perspective. It's actually the other way round: It's a sign that more ubuntu people actually *do* contribute back to Debian, which is a win-win situation for both sides. You can't please everyone, but don't let single people discourage you.

Sando: Thanks for discouraging yet another potential contributor. I hope you're happy with your rant now.

Sandro Tosi said...

@Tom: count till 10 before calling someone else's thougths stupid...

@a1fie: if you want to contribute you contribute, no matter what. Accusing me of having discouraged someone from contributing is quite false because if they have the desire to do so, they'd do. My words count nothing, if you haven't yet realized...

Anonymous said...

Serious people, GET A LIFE!!! There is the Sine flu, War, US Economy, TARP, a 10.2% Unemployment Rate, and SOOOO much more important things to be concerned and active about -- than some stupid political email crapola.

What a waste of drive space, bandwidth and time this OP is. God, can I get my 1 minute back for my posted reply? Jezuz.

Benjamin Drung said...

Sandro, your words (or writings) can have an impact.

Your blog post neither will stop me from contributing to Debian, nor from using my ubuntu address for the changelog.

Tom said...

It's "count to" and I've done that. So?

Anonymous said...

As long as the Debian Desktop Project exists, Ubuntu should not.

Anonymous said...

"As long as the Debian Desktop Project exists, Ubuntu should not."

How utterly arrogant, short-sighted and elitist. Did Microsoft purchase Debian now?

Fazer said...

If you don't want developers from other distros to work on yours, then you should not be in the open source community at all, because you clearly don't understand how it works.

Sandro Tosi said...

@Arkadiusz: thanks for teaching me. because you are.... yeah, who are you exactly?

Unknown said...

My two cents: posts like this do discourage people from contributing to Debian. It highlights the fact that for you guys, politics is more important than contribution.

You are of course free to say whatever you like on your blog, and I am free to think to myself 'Jeez, I hope I never have to work with that guy'.

Anonymous said...

I'll never contribute to Debian. It's politics like this more than anything else that divide people vs unite them.

Thijs said...

@Snirp: I don't mind you shying away from Debian if you generalise one small little boy's misplaced blog post to project-wide policy or sentiments.

Riku Voipio said...

@sandrotosi get your feet back to the ground: *I* am "doing a big disservice to Debian"?

yes. please try understand why instead of claiming that it is not true.

You all doing a disservice to all the Debian people who want co-operate with ALL *people* in free software community, not just with the "elite of @debian.org".

@sandrotosi the small percentage of ubuntu contributors getting back to Debian is so small, that they can easily ignore my blog post.

This is wrong. Many key packages in debian are maintained by ubuntu people (often using their "debian.org" mail address so perhaps you don't even realize it). And is also also contradictory with your post to begin with. If there is so few ubuntu contributors, how could you have noticed them to begin with? Either there are more contributors than you admit or you are getting angry on completly trivial stuff.

ps.
Howabout fixing a RC bug as an apology?

Snirp said...

@all
My reaction was a bit over the top, i guess. I am a happy kubuntu user and would love to start contributing. I do not begin to understand why the emotions keep running so high. In open source everybody wins, right? Forget about my previous comment...

Unknown said...

Howabout fixing a RC bug as an apology?

Great idea.

How about everyone posting on here fixes one too, just for the hell of it? :D

Sandro Tosi said...

@Thijs: I hope you're feeling much better now...

@<all>: Anyhow, if everyone complaining here about how discouraging to contribute to Debian my blog post is, had actually invested their time in DOING SOMETHING for Debian instead of blablabla, we now have a better distro... Of course, it's always easier talking that doing something

plAcid said...

inane and pointless, yet somehow compelling enough that i got to the bottom. Seriously, why care about such a microscopically small detail?

Diego said...

lame and segregative blog post. Doesn't construct anything.

Unknown said...

@Sandro Tosi:
Maybe I should've, but I've got an @ubuntu.com address and clearly I'm not wanted to contribute?

Just admit that you're wrong when you can't support your opinion with nothing more than petty loyalty issues, personal attacks and statements that your post should be ignored.

When we comment on your blog post and you don't like it, maybe you shouldn't have posted in the first place?

You do not have the attitude a free software developer should have.

Sandro Tosi said...

@DCK: you (all) can stretch my post as much as yo want, but in NO point I talked about 'contribution', else please point to the exact location of that.

am I not supporting what I wrote? did anyone is actually trying to discuss what I wrote or everyone is coming here and insulting? Should I reply politely to them? NO WAY, hence my comments.

You can comment what you want, and I can disagree with your comments, and I can make it clear: does this mean I shouldn't have posted? non sequitur

I think you should think about all other insulting here as people that "do not have the attitude a free software developer should have.": did you do that? of course not, so please go away if you don't like it.

David Moreno said...

You're boring. And the only reason why I'm replying on this post it's because I'm an asshole.

Daniel Beck said...

so, is it possible to contribute with an @msn address?

;-)

ओंकार (Onkar) said...

I am not a DD yet so the second point does not apply to me.

I use Ubuntu as primary OS. I am a Ubuntu MOTU team member so I have a @ubuntu.com address. I regularly feed back packaging fixes to Debian in the packages and I always use @ubuntu.com address. The main reason I use @ubuntu.com is because it is an alias to my primary email address. So even if I change my primary email address people can still reach me. I see nothing wrong in that.
There are exactly 10 packages where I am listed as uploader currently and 2 of them I created/revived in Ubuntu first and ported in Debian later. Since I am no DD/NM/DM yet so I always need sponsorship and I have pretty good response in that regard from nice developers in Debian java team. And none of them ever complained about why I used @ubuntu.com address.

Based on my experience I am already convinced that your sentiment/attitude is not representative of the Debian developers community. I hope that you are alone in this regard.

Sandro Tosi said...

@Onkar (and others): it should be OBVIOUS that these are just MY opinions and absolutely NOT represent what the Debian project thinks. I'm NOT a representative, Debian speakman, nor a delegate, so I speak as JUST ONE developer.

Unknown said...

This post made me wish I had a ubuntu.com email address to switch some of my packages too, just because the premise of this is so ludicrous.

Unknown said...

My email address is more prestigious than yours!