The Linux desktop has a maintenance problem due to the lack of volunteer contributors.
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@m @TheEvilSkeleton well, so what? Should we outlaw LTS distros, on the offchance, that their user will file a bug report regarding an older version? Maybe GNOME apps should refuse to install on anything except Arch?
I'm a sysadmin. On a daily basis I get issue reports regarding systems that run for example Debian 12. For stuff that is fixed in latest Arch. Should I now force the entire company to switch their servers to Arch, because I don't feel like dealing with these issues?
@leniwcowaty Knowingly distributing an old release of an app to a large, tech-illiterate audience, with hundreds of known bugs, pretending it’s the latest and greatest, and the support link pointing to the upstream issue tracker, is not “Long Term Support”. I’d say it’s the opposite, because this kind of abuse is actually damaging to the long-term survival of the upstream project.
If I were a GNOME Calendar developer, I’d be furious.
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@TheEvilSkeleton @reflex From a purist perspective? Whoever packages the code is to be the person that gets to triage, that was where I was going with what I wrote.
So in the case of unofficial flathub packages, whoever makes those packages is imo supposed to be the one that checks if they're just outdated or still true.
From a pragmatist standpoint, if that particular flatpack is known to package new releases quickly, you could again make the case that it'd be valid to go to upstream.
@Isofruit @TheEvilSkeleton I still think the packager is responsible for the initial triage. Packaging mistakes are a thing and sometimes they won't notice new dependencies or other configuration changes. It should not be pushed upstream until they are certain they did everything right.
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@m @TheEvilSkeleton well, so what? Should we outlaw LTS distros, on the offchance, that their user will file a bug report regarding an older version? Maybe GNOME apps should refuse to install on anything except Arch?
I'm a sysadmin. On a daily basis I get issue reports regarding systems that run for example Debian 12. For stuff that is fixed in latest Arch. Should I now force the entire company to switch their servers to Arch, because I don't feel like dealing with these issues?
@leniwcowaty @m @TheEvilSkeleton
From what I can tell, the root problem is resources burnt and reputation damage created by users getting old software.
Imo there's a fair case that the one who packages is to be the first line of support that maybe informs upstream.
To solve that problem there are many options. Adjusting the support link, branding, only shipping the flatpak etc. would be some possibilities.
Which way to go imo would be up to a calm discussion between distro and upstream, no?
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