On Jun 9, 2013, at 8:53 AM, Alex Clark <aclark@aclark.net> wrote:
<small_rant>But: this happens all the time in open source communities, even mature ones. Someone volunteers to perform some complex task and hand-waves-away some requirement they don't personally feel is important under the "too hard" or "I don't have time for that, I'm doing this" umbrella.
Someone else comes along and says "wait, what happened to XXX?" at which point others join in to emphasize the importance of XXX. At this point, it's more clear whether or not XXX is actually important. But during this time: XXX is broken and many people on both sides are unhappy.
GOLDEN RULE: That's why even in open source, the "golden rule of OPS" is still important: PLEASE DO NOT BREAK SHIT. Even if you are fixing other more important functionality and don't think XXX is important. Or if XXX and the thing you want to do cannot co-exist, then make sure you get extensive buy-in from a large percentage of folks before you consider removing XXX. If for no other reason, then you will most certainly draw unwanted attention to yourself (which is especially frustrating in the context of "trying to do good things"). </small_rant>
Anyway, I've seen this so many times I don't even get angry anymore. Because I know everyone involved has nothing but the best intentions. In this case, I'd like to see the download count functionality restored. (I spent a full year building a website whose almost-sole-functionality relies on download counts existing and working properly.) So, please call me when they are back.:-) And if I can help in anyway to make that happen, please let me know.
PyPI's central purpose is to act as a repository and index of packages. Download counts are an auxiliary feature. Prior to the CDN there were large swathes of people, primarily in non US locations, who simply could not use PyPI because of bad routes between them and PyPI. Some folks were getting download speeds more reminiscent of dialup instead of Broadband. Moving to a CDN made PyPI reasonably function again for those people. So yes. I broke Download counts because they were not more important than people being able to actually use PyPI to install from. And, thanks to Fastly generously giving us a access to streaming logs, will be bringing them back once the issues are sorted out. ----------------- Donald Stufft PGP: 0x6E3CBCE93372DCFA // 7C6B 7C5D 5E2B 6356 A926 F04F 6E3C BCE9 3372 DCFA