Re: When to get the upstream maintainer involved.

[Ben Pfaff <pfaffben@pilot.msu.edu>]

bruce@pixar.com (Bruce Perens) writes:
> Is there policy manual material on when to get the upstream maintainer
> involved in a problem? If not, we need to insert some.
> 
> In general, you should _not_ bother the upstream maintainer until you
> have determined that there is a bug in their program. Specificaly:

I think that you're being a little too strict in your policy, Bruce.
As a software author myself, I'm interested in *any* bug that someone
finds in my program.  If it turns out to be a packaging problem, then
I won't be able to reproduce the bug and I'll let the person reporting
it know that.

I especially don't think we should require every maintainer to be a
competent C programmer, which is what your proposed policy might
require in some cases.

However, it is nice if maintainers do a good-faith assessment of
whether the bug is in the packaging before passing it on to upstream
authors.
-- 
Ben Pfaff <pfaffben@pilot.msu.edu> <blp@gnu.org> <pfaffben@debian.org>
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