[Pkg-mutt-maintainers] Bug#870635: mutt package is not using the official mutt tarball

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 01:18:26PM -0800, Kevin J. McCarthy wrote:
>And how dare I be hostile, since your opinion seems to be without any
>knowledge of what has happened,

I think I'm up to speed on that; I've read the mutt mailing list thread
through, but please let me know if I'm missing a particular point.

> or of the work that has taken place in
>Mutt the last few years under my development.

I'm genuinely pleasantly surprised to learn that mutt upstream has
picked up. That is great news. It's been a long time since I tried to
interact with upstream (looking at the timeline, I think before you took
over) and the experience wasn't particularly good back then.

>Yes, I'm aware of the situation of stable.  Antonio has clearly kept me
>informed that stable is not possible to remedy.

I'm not sure about impossible but certainly very difficult. But
unfortunately we can't just disregard it, because it is intertwined to
some extent with the future releases. For example, I'm not sure it is
possible for us to have two distinct source packages in the archive with
different sources at the same time, and the "mutt" source package exists
due to it being in stable. So even if we give up trying to resolve the
issue in stable, it still impacts what we can achieve in
testing/unstable.

>Oh, now Debian is concerned about what is ethical?  If no one cares
>about the mutt package, then let it die.  Or let another developer pick
>up the package.  But allow that possibility now, not in 3 years after
>another release cycle using a transition package.

Yes I think we definitely should not prevent someone from packaging
Mutt. A binary transition package would be a problem but a source name
clash would be worse. Therefore if the decision is for *this* package to
be renamed neomutt, the source package must be renamed. Effectively that
actually makes the new neomutt source package a new package, subject to
the NEW queue, and the existing bugs would need manual
handling/reassigning, etc.

>> Finally it would switch all existing users from one software to another
>> unexpectedly: just because we did that once doesn't mean we should do it
>> again.
>
>I believe this is an example of false equivalence.  Is unexpectedly
>switching *mutt* package users to NeoMutt the same as switching them
>back to Mutt?

I'm not sure I understand your point, sorry. I meant "two wrongs don't
make a right", and I am acknowledging and agreeing with you that the
initial switch was a wrong. But if your point here is that a switch back
to Mutt from neomutt would not be as bad (or not bad at all), that's an
interesting point.

>This is also part of the "sweep the whole mess under the rug" argument
>you are perpetuating: "Oh well, we did it.  Can't do anything about it,
>can't go back... gosh there's just nothing to do but turn mutt into a
>transition package."

I'm sorry you aren't happy with my proposal, but I really do not want to
just sweep it under the rug. I acknowledge the problem, I'm sorry it was
done (although I didn't do it, from a project perspective I think that's
irrelevant), and I want to see a solution that satisfies both you, but
also addresses the other technical issues we have in Debian (such as not
preventing anyone else from packaging Mutt in future, as stated earlier)

I haven't yet seen a fully worked proposal for how to address this
posted here at all; just sketches of proposals.

>Spare me.  We are having this conversation because Debian is violating
>my copyright, and I filed an RC bug.

Someone else has adjusted the bug severity since, but I'm not going to
get involved in bug severity ping-pong. I'm not motivated by whether its
an RC bug or not, resolving this is the right thing for Debian to do.

>Please stop speaking as if you are one of the mutt package maintainers.
>I don't need to make a pitch to you, and I don't give a toot about a
>"healthy relationship" at this point.

No, I'm not a mutt or neomutt package maintainer (or neomutt either. But
depending how this plays out, I could very well end up being a real-mutt
maintainer). I'm merely a concerned Debian Developer and long-time mutt
user, who has spotted a problem that has not been addressed and looked
to be in need of help. In fact I've been a mutt user much longer than a
Debian developer.


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⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Jonathan Dowland
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://jmtd.net
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