Hey distribution packagers…
I communicated with a few people about my attitude and hostility towards distribution packagers. I want to apologize for poorly communicating my intents, generalization, and vagueness in the past. I want to take a moment to properly address my behavior and intention.
To clarify why I was purposefully vague all this time, it was to avoid drama with Fedora, but I hadn't realized that doing so would come at the cost of upsetting everybody else – again, I apologize for being ignorant and insensitive.
I'm not against distribution packaging, even though I've repeatedly miscommunicated that. What I'm against is those packaging improperly, utterly failing to serve their target audience, and worsening the reputation of those who have no control over it, without taking responsibility of their own actions.
In the case of nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpq6ec3sql5ccw4qetc02je24rljfvzruq553mcdpq39geykfdn4mls226zjw (nprofile…6zjw), the only distribution that had been remarkably difficult to work with was nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqgl5fk77u2zr6p034k4zyvmgy3uwx8gaxr8e4w44y2n7cthx7y3nsrn05jc (nprofile…05jc), specifically the packagers.
The package provided by Fedora Linux keeps breaking one way or another, but because Fedora Workstation and Fedora KDE are somewhat marketed and targeted towards newcomers, users are more inclined to believe that we, the developers, are responsible for the bad experience. These users are misled into thinking that any problem with the package is a bug within Bottles, because they're simply not aware of the distribution model, nor are they aware of the legal and technical limitations of the tools Fedora packagers use. They report those issues to us, in hope to make the software better, but then they realize that the issues don't exist in the app.
Even worse, the bug reporting platform Fedora uses, Red Hat Bugzilla, is unnecessarily difficult to use, especially for a newcomer. I used to report issues directly to developers just to avoid using Bugzilla, and I'm sure many people have felt the same way. I'm not proud of it, but it's the harsh reality.
Moreover, because of 1. the extremely misleading representation of the package, 2. newcomers’ assumptions that every package is provided by the developers, and 3. how unintuitive Red Hat Bugzilla is, the packagers very rarely receive those bug reports.
When developers tell them that their package is broken, politely or not, their responses are typically synonymous to “can't confirm; so far there haven't been any reported issues.” They then “invite” us to report these issues to them using Red Hat Bugzilla, and they refuse to either drop the package or add a label clearly stating that it's an unofficial package.
It's not our responsibility to undo the damage that they caused; it is the packagers’. It's unnecessary burden for us especially when most of us also work on other projects. It worsens the user experience and our reputation for something we haven't caused. And while it affects everybody mentioned so far, the only party that isn't affected is the Fedora packagers causing this. This isn't to say every Fedora packager is like this. They're not, but the ones I interacted with were.
Now, what about distributions like Arch Linux, NixOS, Void, Gentoo, etc.? I have nothing against them, even if they ever package Bottles badly. These distributions are for advanced users; they assume that users fundamentally understand the distribution model, which is the correct way of handling it. Users generally report to their distribution for any problem before they report to us (at least, from experience). It's a win for everybody. There's no reason to limit those who don't burden others.
I'm well aware that my actions affect everybody. For example, the “Exit on non-sandboxed environments merge request requires every distribution to patch it, and I'm well aware that it sucks. The commit message itself generalizes to “distributions”, when it should've been “Fedora Bottles RPM packagers”, which I apologize. I'm personally against trademarking Bottles because it doesn't solve the inherent problem that some distributions, like in this case Fedora, abuse their rights to redistribute apps “just because the license allows it”. Having the rights to do something doesn't mean it's okay to inconvenience and burden others. Bottles is an app I am emotionally involved with; it's what got me started with GTK. I once was burned out because of the Fedora packagers, but I won't allow that again. I also won't allow them to treat others the way they treated us.
Just to be clear, I'm not defending myself here. I've been oblivious of the generalizations for several years, which I genuinely feel bad. I hope to communicate better, starting with this post. Once again, though, the only people I take issue with are the Fedora packagers that are unwilling to properly communicate with developers, the Fedora packaging guidelines for being lax in their testing methodology, and failing to serve their target audience.
#Fedora #Linux
TheEvilSkeleton /
npub1r2…whmvv
2025-02-07 02:12:47
Author Public Key
npub1r2nmnjv8vz5hgf49egm9vvtfj4hhaf60y2lss6mvjk86d2n6rcgsmwhmvvPublished at
2025-02-07 02:12:47Event JSON
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"content": "Hey distribution packagers…\n\nI communicated with a few people about my attitude and hostility towards distribution packagers. I want to apologize for poorly communicating my intents, generalization, and vagueness in the past. I want to take a moment to properly address my behavior and intention.\n\nTo clarify why I was purposefully vague all this time, it was to avoid drama with Fedora, but I hadn't realized that doing so would come at the cost of upsetting everybody else – again, I apologize for being ignorant and insensitive.\n\nI'm not against distribution packaging, even though I've repeatedly miscommunicated that. What I'm against is those packaging improperly, utterly failing to serve their target audience, and worsening the reputation of those who have no control over it, without taking responsibility of their own actions.\n\nIn the case of nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpq6ec3sql5ccw4qetc02je24rljfvzruq553mcdpq39geykfdn4mls226zjw, the only distribution that had been remarkably difficult to work with was nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqgl5fk77u2zr6p034k4zyvmgy3uwx8gaxr8e4w44y2n7cthx7y3nsrn05jc, specifically the packagers.\n\nThe package provided by Fedora Linux keeps breaking one way or another, but because Fedora Workstation and Fedora KDE are somewhat marketed and targeted towards newcomers, users are more inclined to believe that we, the developers, are responsible for the bad experience. These users are misled into thinking that any problem with the package is a bug within Bottles, because they're simply not aware of the distribution model, nor are they aware of the legal and technical limitations of the tools Fedora packagers use. They report those issues to us, in hope to make the software better, but then they realize that the issues don't exist in the app.\n\nEven worse, the bug reporting platform Fedora uses, Red Hat Bugzilla, is unnecessarily difficult to use, especially for a newcomer. I used to report issues directly to developers just to avoid using Bugzilla, and I'm sure many people have felt the same way. I'm not proud of it, but it's the harsh reality.\n\nMoreover, because of 1. the extremely misleading representation of the package, 2. newcomers’ assumptions that every package is provided by the developers, and 3. how unintuitive Red Hat Bugzilla is, the packagers very rarely receive those bug reports.\n\nWhen developers tell them that their package is broken, politely or not, their responses are typically synonymous to “can't confirm; so far there haven't been any reported issues.” They then “invite” us to report these issues to them using Red Hat Bugzilla, and they refuse to either drop the package or add a label clearly stating that it's an unofficial package.\n\nIt's not our responsibility to undo the damage that they caused; it is the packagers’. It's unnecessary burden for us especially when most of us also work on other projects. It worsens the user experience and our reputation for something we haven't caused. And while it affects everybody mentioned so far, the only party that isn't affected is the Fedora packagers causing this. This isn't to say every Fedora packager is like this. They're not, but the ones I interacted with were.\n\nNow, what about distributions like Arch Linux, NixOS, Void, Gentoo, etc.? I have nothing against them, even if they ever package Bottles badly. These distributions are for advanced users; they assume that users fundamentally understand the distribution model, which is the correct way of handling it. Users generally report to their distribution for any problem before they report to us (at least, from experience). It's a win for everybody. There's no reason to limit those who don't burden others.\n\nI'm well aware that my actions affect everybody. For example, the “Exit on non-sandboxed environments merge request requires every distribution to patch it, and I'm well aware that it sucks. The commit message itself generalizes to “distributions”, when it should've been “Fedora Bottles RPM packagers”, which I apologize. I'm personally against trademarking Bottles because it doesn't solve the inherent problem that some distributions, like in this case Fedora, abuse their rights to redistribute apps “just because the license allows it”. Having the rights to do something doesn't mean it's okay to inconvenience and burden others. Bottles is an app I am emotionally involved with; it's what got me started with GTK. I once was burned out because of the Fedora packagers, but I won't allow that again. I also won't allow them to treat others the way they treated us.\n\nJust to be clear, I'm not defending myself here. I've been oblivious of the generalizations for several years, which I genuinely feel bad. I hope to communicate better, starting with this post. Once again, though, the only people I take issue with are the Fedora packagers that are unwilling to properly communicate with developers, the Fedora packaging guidelines for being lax in their testing methodology, and failing to serve their target audience.\n\n#Fedora #Linux",
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