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I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

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sgosnell
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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#2 Post by sgosnell »

There's still a screensaver? Who knew? Who cares?
Take my advice, I'm not using it.

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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#3 Post by stevepusser »

We should get together and get him a present to soothe his hurt feelings:

Image
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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#4 Post by arochester »

One thing that amazes me is the number of comments which this has attracted.

I wonder how it can be such a live issue?

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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#5 Post by stevepusser »

Still a just first world problem. It pretty much pales in comparison to those facing privation and death in less fortunate countries.

"My leg has been blown off by a mine!"

"Oh yeah? My screensaver is nagging me about it being too old!"

"Wow. OK, you win."

Said no one ever.
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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#6 Post by dilberts_left_nut »

It should simply be patched to remove the undesirable behaviour, and/or forked if required for political reasons.

His reasoning is retarded and ignoring direct bug reports on old versions (how many really?) is his remedy.

Imagine if every upstream put "old nags" in their code - a stable release would be full of stupid (and pointless) popups.
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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#7 Post by Innovate »

Is that even consider as "bug report"?
Sometimes it's even "selfish feature request" rather be call bug report.

spacex
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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#8 Post by spacex »

Nah, but Debian should get a newer version of "xscreensaver" and "xscreensaver-data" into stable, so that people don't get the outdated warnings anymore, and the annoying message about our distribution not doing us justice. Besides, the version in Testing are better, as in better screensavers. Obviously I have fixed it for myself, picked them directly from testing as all the dependencies are covered in Stable. That's the easy way to do it, but not the recommended way.

But it works for me, and nah, I have no intention of backporting it for others, because that comes with obligations. Debian should upgrade Stable with the versions from testing. It doesn't make Stable any less stable.

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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#9 Post by dilberts_left_nut »

spacex wrote:Debian should upgrade Stable with the versions from testing. It doesn't make Stable any less stable.
No they shouldn't and yes it does.
The 'stable' (does not change) policies have been there for a long time and have proven their worth in providing a dependable release.
I see no reason to make exceptions just because upstream wants it - that is one of the important points of free software, you must be free to modify it to suit your use case.
There are certain things that change faster and need special handling (browsers, AV etc.) but this isn't one of them - security fixes are backported to the released version as with everythng else, and the nag code is an artificial obsolescence introduced for ridiculous (and easily handled in other ways) reasons.
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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#10 Post by stevepusser »

spacex wrote:Nah, but Debian should get a newer version of "xscreensaver" and "xscreensaver-data" into stable, so that people don't get the outdated warnings anymore, and the annoying message about our distribution not doing us justice. Besides, the version in Testing are better, as in better screensavers. Obviously I have fixed it for myself, picked them directly from testing as all the dependencies are covered in Stable. That's the easy way to do it, but not the recommended way.

But it works for me, and nah, I have no intention of backporting it for others, because that comes with obligations. Debian should upgrade Stable with the versions from testing. It doesn't make Stable any less stable.
It's been backported "for others" the first day that it was reported. Piece of cake using the OBS.

Even for Debian 7. http://software.opensuse.org/download.h ... creensaver


Or I could have just patched 5.30 to remove the nag and thrown that into the OBS...
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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#11 Post by spacex »

Yes, but it isn't in the jessie-backports, where I would want it, as I don't add any outside repositories. Not even yours.

As for the patch, I strongly disagree doing that, as I'm dead against patching away the warnings. Free software or not, Debian shouldn't go against the developers wishes. Instead, Debian should honor it, and either live with the warnings or remove Xscreensaver all together, and instead use something that honors Debian needs for 24 months.

Debian behaved badly to the developers of Live-Build, and now towards the dev of Xscreensaver. I don't like how Debian handles stuff these days. Way to entitled, pushing good devs away. Change the code? Then fork it, and change the name. That's the only decent approach.
Last edited by spacex on 2016-04-06 23:28, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#12 Post by spacex »

dilberts_left_nut wrote:
spacex wrote:Debian should upgrade Stable with the versions from testing. It doesn't make Stable any less stable.
No they shouldn't and yes it does.
The 'stable' (does not change) policies have been there for a long time and have proven their worth in providing a dependable release.
I see no reason to make exceptions just because upstream wants it - that is one of the important points of free software, you must be free to modify it to suit your use case.
There are certain things that change faster and need special handling (browsers, AV etc.) but this isn't one of them - security fixes are backported to the released version as with everythng else, and the nag code is an artificial obsolescence introduced for ridiculous (and easily handled in other ways) reasons.
Well, that's how it is today, but allow me to disagree with this policy. In my mind, Stable should be kept reasonably stable, but not frozen and dead. In my mind, Stable should get a new definition, as in "not to many bugs", not as in "never going to change". We'll probably disagree about that, and that's fine. But in my mind, Debian should become more current. Not as current as some of the competitors, but more current than today.

montagdude
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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#13 Post by montagdude »

Is it really that much trouble for the developer to simply redirect bug reports about old versions to the maintainers of the various distributions? His method of bug handling seems to be his personal email, so maybe that's the problem if it's causing that much annoyance for him.

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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#14 Post by dilberts_left_nut »

montagdude wrote:Is it really that much trouble for the developer to simply redirect bug reports about old versions to the maintainers of the various distributions? His method of bug handling seems to be his personal email, so maybe that's the problem if it's causing that much annoyance for him.
^^This.
All the handwaving and swearing and bugging end-users with popups most won't know what to do with, then abusing people in the bug report and effectively giving an ultimatum to change the distro's release policy or (please) don't use his code...
Maybe too long spent looking at marching ants and drawing penises on users lockscreens.
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keithpeter
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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#15 Post by keithpeter »

Quite funny really: jwz is of course famous for his key role in the Netscape -> Mozilla open source transition. He seems to find the *concept* of a stable distribution not changing over a timescale of 2 or 3 years other than for severe security concerns surprisingly difficult to grasp.
With regard to future versions of Debian, again I think you should be
more clear in your license terms. Don't pretend to publish it as free
software, but then use pretty "please", time bombs and cursing to get
users to not use their freedoms.
-- Peter Nowee
I don't know who Peter Nowee is but I think he has a point here. The GPL is the GPL. No 'moral' or other residual rights.

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mor
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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#16 Post by mor »

spacex wrote:Free software or not, Debian shouldn't go against the developers wishes.
Allow me to disagree.

First of all, you can't say "free-software or not" and do as if it is something one can put aside in this matter. It is in fact all that matters.
The whole point of free software is to leave freedom to the user, it can't be freedom if it comes with caveats.

Don't get me wrong, I think Zawinski's plea in the code is perfectly understandable (however obnoxiously passive aggressive) and just has he acknowledges that, being his work free-software, in the end a user will do "whatever the **** he wants", he should know that a plea like that is just a plea and it doesn't belong in free-software.

Honoring pleas is a noble thing to be willing to do, and to some extent I too feel like we should honor Jamie's, but then again, this is really a matter of freedom and I am not inclined to let even the noble sentiment of honoring pleas trump the importance of being always able to exercise the freedom that is granted by the license.
Xscreensaver has a feature that some users do not want, that feature can be changed because Xscreensaver is free-software and not "use-as-author-wishes-ware".
Asking to do as he wishes is fine, expecting it not so much.

A final consideration must be done about jmz's demeanor. I am definitely not bothered by strong language and cursing, thus I'm not hanging on the mere crudeness of his words.
But the underlining attitude and arrogance, especially directed at users who were trying to have a constructive discussion and bridge the gap between his plea and Debian's policies… well, that made me kinda not care about his plea anymore.

In conclusion, I don't know what happened with Live-Build and I have no idea about what you're referring to when you say you "don't like how Debian handles stuff these days", but this matter is quite simple: it is a most trivial issue (not even a First World Problem, as Steve said, but much much more trivial), handled by jmz in a ridiculously childish and annoying way.

Bye ;)

spacex
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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#17 Post by spacex »

mor wrote:
spacex wrote:Free software or not, Debian shouldn't go against the developers wishes.
Allow me to disagree.

First of all, you can't say "free-software or not" and do as if it is something one can put aside in this matter. It is in fact all that matters.
The whole point of free software is to leave freedom to the user, it can't be freedom if it comes with caveats.

Bye ;)
Sure, you may disagree.

I don't mind end users changing the code for themselves. Obviously, that is a freedom the user has. But, if you change the code and redistribute it to others, then you should fork it and change the name instead. No matter how small the change may be, the app is no longer authentic, and the original developer can in no way be expected to support or be responsible for an app where someone else has changed the code. In cases like that, it's much cleaner if that someone forks it, renames it, and redistribute it with the new name. The someone who patched it, is obviously responsible to support it. That someone is the one who should receive bug reports. Not the original developer.

But then, obviously the fork needs to be developed and maintained. It's much more comfortable to call the developer a "prick" and just patch away anything Debian doesn't like. Still leeching on the "pricks" future work and development. There isn't to many who could do what Zawinski does, and in my mind a certain level of gratitude and respect is called for. Debian should never take anyone's effort for granted. After all, it's free work, and we shouldn't want to push good developers away.

What happened with live-build, is something you can evaluate for yourself:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=804315

The ironi is that those who attempted this high jack, hasn't been able to add uefi-support to the live images themselves yet. Which was the root of the issue to start with. That makes it a big joke in my mind.

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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#18 Post by spacex »

keithpeter wrote: I don't know who Peter Nowee is but I think he has a point here. The GPL is the GPL. No 'moral' or other residual rights.
I don't agree. Common decency and moral always apply. It's the developer who do Debian a favour. Not the other way around.

If you change the code and redistribute something, you should also change the name and sign it with your email or other contact info. No matter what the license is. Because it's cleaner, and because it's the right thing to do.

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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#19 Post by dilberts_left_nut »

spacex wrote:If you change the code and redistribute something, you should also change the name and sign it with your email or other contact info. No matter what the license is. Because it's cleaner, and because it's the right thing to do.
No, because that is how distributions work, by curating, integrating and distrubuting upstream software - otherwise every end user gets to grab code from each project and do all their own compiling integration etc.

Debian has a responsibility to provide software that meeds the needs of it's users, has package maintainers to package according to policy, take bug reports etc. and it's very clear what has been changed in any code, the original source and any patches are separated in the source packages.

In an ideal world, bug reports go to the package maintainer (which reportbug does) and only relevant new bugs get sent to upstream by the maintainer.
People reporting direct against old versions are stupid, but that isn't Debian's problem and jwz's "solution" is still retarded and won't change the stupid peoples behaviour anyway.
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Re: I would like Debian to stop shipping XScreenSaver

#20 Post by mor »

spacex wrote:I don't mind end users changing the code for themselves. Obviously, that is a freedom the user has. But, if you change the code and redistribute it to others, then you should fork it and change the name instead. No matter how small the change may be, the app is no longer authentic,
Stop for a second.
No matter how small the change, a fork is needed? :shock:
Have you any idea of how many forks would be needed all throughout *nixland if this was how things were intended to be?

Read this from FSF's faqs.
spacex wrote:and the original developer can in no way be expected to support or be responsible for an app where someone else has changed the code.
That is true, it shouldn't be that Debian users go directly to him with problems on the obsolete version, but as dln already explained there are parts of the mechanisms that are out of Debian's control.
And Jamie's "solution" to nag end users with a bothersome popup, as if most of them could do anything about it, is asinine, he should have instead worked with Debian on ways to make users file bugs on Debian's tracker.

Bye

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