Is it just me, or is LTSP a mess?

[Jordan Mantha]

On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 11:28 AM, R. Scott Belford <scott at belford.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 10, 2008 at 6:37 AM, Jordan Mantha <laserjock at ubuntu.com>
> wrote:
> ----8<----snip------
>>
>> I get the impression at times that people think there are a myriad of
>> people paid to work on these issues. The reality is that there has
>> only ever been 1 person paid to work on Edubuntu/LTSP, and in fact
>> that person has been moved to another project for his paid time and is
>> now volunteering like the rest of us to work on Edubuntu. We had a
>> period of time where the primary developers of Edubuntu were basically
>> inactive due to real life situations. I know I personally feel like
>> I've let the community down by not being around for Hardy, but I have
>> real life obligations I can't just shirk to work on software. These
>> are the times when we need people from the user community to step up
>> and maybe try to contribute a bit here and there. I'm somewhat
>> frantically trying to get Intrepid ready for release and Scott
>> Balneaves sounds like he's able to help out more with LTSP bugs. We're
>> planning on having an LTSP Bug Day next week (looks like Wednesday) in
>> #edubuntu and could use all the help we can get (testing, triage,
>> patches, etc.).
>
> -----8<-------snip------
>
> Thanks for your note, Jordan.  It is true that a positive, pro-active, and
> constructive direction needs to be assumed.  I am not sure that paid staff
> is the key to success or the reason for failure.  The 'only one person is
> getting paid' case was made last year during the Feisty debacle.

Hmm, I wasn't really trying to say that paid staff was the key. I was
more trying to say that resources got very low for a while there and
it's not that developers don't care or are just ignoring people.

<snip>

> The culture of the debian-edu mailing list is one of momentum and
> organization.  I have bugzilla reports, end-user questions, and packaging
> discussions all arrive in my mailbox.  Skolelinux has certainly benefitted
> from government sponsorship, but, the philosophy and intent have been
> Focused on a distro requiring one hour or less of support each week by an
> average teacher.  With this goal in mind, there is a reason to respond to
> all mailing list queries.

That is a good goal and one that I think we'd all like to see as well.
However, I hate sound like a broken record, but we do need people to
be able to respond. I personally can't do much about LTSP support
because I am not going to pretend I know what I'm doing when it comes
to LTSP as I've only tried it a few times between 2 computers. I'm
more than happy to talk about educational apps, the edubuntu
metapackages and Addon CD, how to get involved with bug triaging or
packaging, etc.

> A bug squashing on IRC next week sounds good.  If I have submitted bugs to
> the mailing list but cannot make the IRC meeting, is it still my
> responsibility to handle this bug?  Is there a process for known bugs to be
> addressed whether they come from the list or Launchpad?

If you've filed bugs in Launchpad you should be able to interact on
our bug squashing day via the email you receive. We use IRC to
coordinate and discuss how to handle triage tasks, but we still work
on bugs in Launchpad. Bug reporting via mailing list is not very
helpful from a developer perspective for many reasons. Email bug
reports are usually quite lengthy, are often multiple bugs in one,
lack tracking abilities, and easy get lost as the mailing list moves
forward. I realize that reporting bugs can be more difficult than just
sending an email to the list, but if we turn this list into a bug
tracker it's going to be no fun for either reporters or developers.

So here's what I would do. Before next Wednesday, go to
https://bugs.launchpad.net/~edubuntu-bugs/+packagebugs which lists the
packages that Edubuntu is tracking the bugs of. You can
click on individual packages (like ltsp) and see the open bugs. If you
see a bug you're experiencing you can add information as a comment. If
you don't see a bug you're experiencing go ahead and file a new bug.
Keep in mind that we close bugs as they are fixed in the development
release so a bug may be closed because it's fixed in Intrepid but you
might still experience it in Hardy. If you find one of those and it's
really an issue, please let us know and we can add a Hardy task and
work towards getting a fix in hardy-updates.

> All the pieces are in place.  I'd like to think that there is nothing but
> good will amongst the communities of users and developers.  A little vision
> and follow-through is all we lack.
>
> With Respect

I agree, and thanks.

-Jordan