[Python-Dev] Re: Infinie recursion in Pickle

[François Pinard]

[Fredrik Lundh]

> > I usually praise maintainers as intelligent people. :-)

> so why not do as we tell you, and post bug reports on SF?

Because this is not an efficient way to proceed, and does not always work.
I do not have much spare time, and would hate seeing it spoiled, fighting
with artificial problems coming from tools doomed to be replaced anyway.

> or better, join the roundup team, and make sure it's good enough
> to replace the SF tracker.

I found the SF tracker so unattractive that I've been tempted to do that
indeed.  Yet, thinking more about it, it is non-sense for me to invest
vast amount of energies merely to acquire the capability of submitting
numerous little things (as documentation nits, for example).

A long while ago, I witnessed that we had to pay real money to machine
constructors, yearly, for having the right of submitting reports to them
in such a way that we could later use their consequent works.  The free
software movement turned the values around, and refreshingly underlined
that reporting a problem is a contribution from the user to the software
maintainer and indirectly, to the community.  For many years, we are living
a progressive swing-back, in which expenditure of money has been replaced
by all the stunts and sufferings induced by inadequate communication tools,
like bug trackers.  The price to pay is rather high.  If users' contributions
were really welcome, maintainers would not try to force users into this.

It is much easier and comfortable for me to be a mere user, and let others
pay the price.  However, my principles and education strongly tell me that
when something is given to me (like Python), it is only normal and natural
trying to give something back.  As I contributed many thousands of hours for
other projects, I did my share overall, and my own principles are satisfied.
Enough for me to refuse a high price ticket, in free time and irritation,
before I could offer my work or dedication.  Oh, I may come to like bug
trackers.  But surely, I find extremely distasteful being forced into them.

-- 
François Pinard   http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~pinard