Date: Sat, 21 Mar 2020 15:06:16 +0100 From: Marc Lehmann <schmorp@schmorp.de> To: Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve@sohara.org> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, portmgr@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD asking contributors to fix their opinions - is it official? Message-ID: <20200321140616.GB5911@schmorp.de> In-Reply-To: <20200321131308.a59d3cfec38913369da67b67@sohara.org> References: <20200321122609.GB5709@schmorp.de> <20200321131308.a59d3cfec38913369da67b67@sohara.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Sat, Mar 21, 2020 at 01:13:08PM +0000, Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve@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@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. -- The choice of a Deliantra, the free code+content MORPG -----==- _GNU_ http://www.deliantra.net ----==-- _ generation ---==---(_)__ __ ____ __ Marc Lehmann --==---/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / schmorp@schmorp.de -=====/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20200321140616.GB5911>