[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#427559: CUPS 1.2.11 sucks

[Jerome Alet]

Hi people,

As the main author of two of the software listed by Kurt, namely 
PyKota and Tea4CUPS, I think I'm allowed to add something to this 
thread. 

First some name calling : let me tell that you, Martin-Eric, clearly 
don't understand the problem. The way you answered to Kurt, there's 
no need for you to EVEN answer to me, I'll delete your eventual 
message immediately. 

You seem to be the exact portrait of what I thought a lot of Debian 
developers are : a complete elitist ass-hole. 

IMPORTANT (just in case) : I only use Debian on both my desktops and 
servers since 1999. And I know MOST of Debian developers are not like
you, but unfortunately the most vocal ones are...

What is the use of a bug reporting system if you are only allowed to 
use it to report bugs on the stable release ? Wouldn't it be more 
helpful to be able to report bugs (you may label them 'problems' 
instead) on the development release as well, so they don't impact 
too much people when they'll eventually upgrade their system to the
future stable release and they'll learn but too late that it's entirely
broken ?

Now for the problem itself, which is the important part of my message :

Personally I've noticed the problem when upgrading my development 
machine and immediately announced the problem and ways to mitigate 
it to all users of my own software : 

  http://cgi.librelogiciel.com/pipermail/pykota/2007-June/004888.html
  http://cgi.librelogiciel.com/pipermail/tea4cups/2007-June/000129.html
  
If I didn't upgrade my own laptop, I wouldn't have noticed and would 
have been stuck as to why my software wouldn't work on my clients 
machines ? All these people would have called me and expected quick 
answers. What did I, or all these people, do to you to merit wasting 
our time because of you ? The answer : nothing. You deliberately 
chose to break things without telling anyone beforehand. 

I used to recommend Debian to the people who use my software, and 
I'm now considering recomending an alternative which don't do things 
the opposite way upstream requests. 

I've also seen it the message displayed (or sent) when upgrading that  
cups-pdf was broken by the upgrade.

So I think in a single shot you broke three of the most used CUPS 
backends in the world (from my own statistics which certainely suck,
but anyway), without even trying to contact upstream about these 
software (I can't speak for cups-pdf author though). 

As you've probably noticed by now, you've also broken the way people
EXPECT cups to run, since this is the way upstream expects it too...

None of these software being proprietary, it would be reasonable for 
us to maybe, just maybe, expect some sort of cooperation from Debian 
packagers... 

As the author of several other software included in Debian, I can 
tell for sure that this non-cooperation with upstream problem is not 
specific to CUPS or the software which depends on it. 

BTW, before you try to play the "PyKota and Tea4CUPS are not really 
free so we don't care because..." game with me, read this before : 
http://www.mailarchives.org/list/debian-user/msg/2005/45012 

In conclusion : you broke things, I noticed (almost) in time, workarounds 
exist for my own software, I should be happy. 

I'AM NOT ! 

bye

Jerome Alet