OpenSUSE package maintainer removes Bottles’ donation button with "dont-support.patch" file (social.treehouse.systems)
from DoeJohn@lemmy.world to linux@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 08:26
https://lemmy.world/post/23306500

#linux

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eskuero@lemmy.fromshado.ws on 19 Dec 08:39 next collapse

that’s embarrassing one thing is to patch it to make it work on your system but to remove the donation buttons entirely…

DoeJohn@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 08:52 next collapse

The creator and maintainer of openSUSE Aeon leans towards support of the decision, as he says “package maintaners can do whatever they want”.

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/02253eee-3a6b-4f8c-8597-13e1681d00d5.png">

Cris_Color@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 09:13 collapse

Thanks for the additional context!

sanpo@sopuli.xyz on 19 Dec 08:58 next collapse

It’s kinda shitty, but after reading the other links in the post I can’t say it’s very surprising.

Bottles devs seem weirdly hostile to the idea of anyone repackaging their software, because apparently they’re the only ones that are able to do it properly.

edit: devs also refuse bug reports from any version that’s not Flatpak, so in this context removing the button doesn’t seem that unreasonable.

edit2: now that I’ve had a closer look at the PR mentioned in the post I’m not surprised at all.
Bottles devs are actively hostile. Apparently with this PR it’s impossible to run Bottles outside Flatpak without the package maintainers patching the code.

DoeJohn@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 09:41 next collapse

There is an entire post from the devs on why Bottles is packaged the way it is. [usebottles.com/posts/2022-06-07-an-open-letter/]. If you put yourself in the developers’ position, it’s actually understandable. Distributions ship Bottles package filled with issues or straight up borked, users turn their frustrations to the Bottles developers instead of package maintainers, devs get frustrated and bombarded with issues that they can’t fixed. A ton of time, effort and mental health is wasted. I think the wishes of devs should be respected, even though the software is open source and you CAN package it however you’d like.

fl42v@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 10:06 next collapse

Actively resisting packaging is not the way, tho. You can just require an issue to be reproducible with flatpak, and otherwise tell ppl to bother the maintainer.

huskypenguin@sh.itjust.works on 19 Dec 10:28 collapse

That’s a lot it communication for someone that’s working for free.

0x0@programming.dev on 19 Dec 10:57 next collapse

That’s a disclaimer in the bug submission page.

Rogue@feddit.uk on 19 Dec 20:59 collapse

Which everyone will ignore.

drwankingstein@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 19 Dec 12:54 collapse

They take donations, that’s not free.

sanpo@sopuli.xyz on 19 Dec 10:37 collapse

I don’t think it’s understandable in this case, no.

The entire project depends on Wine, imagine if Wine devs restricted Bottles in what way they are allowed to use it just because Wine project doesn’t want to deal with bugs potentially introduced by the Bottles dev.

But they won’t, because of the license.
And neither can the Bottles devs.

If they want to have total control over their source code, fine, but then they cannot claim to be open-source and release it under GPL.

DoeJohn@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 11:49 collapse

just because Wine project doesn’t want to deal with bugs potentially introduced by the Bottles dev.

If you have issue with Bottles, you don’t immediately go to the Wine bug tracker. If you have issue with packaged Bottles, you immediately go to the Bottles bug tracker. There is clearly a big difference.

sanpo@sopuli.xyz on 19 Dec 12:24 collapse

Yes, and another big difference is that Bottles refuses to provide any kind of help to package maintainers.
According to maintainers’ comments on the Github project, they have to figure out how to build it by trial and error.

I was actually really surprised that there’s isn’t any kind of build documentation.
It’s pretty unusual.

drwankingstein@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 19 Dec 13:01 collapse

actively hostile is putting it nicely, imagine being a paid supporter of bottles, you wake up, update, and find out the app you used to effectively use most of your important apps has no intentionally bricked itself and you need to either download install and setup flatpak, which breaks a good chunk of your apps by default do to the sandboxing, and now you need to spend hours trying to figure that out, or roll back.

I 100% support suse’s decisions.

Oikio@lemmy.world on 19 Dec 09:43 next collapse

I read the drama in Twitter and PR.

While Bottles maintainer does not do a great job to politely prove the point of the patch to disable Bottles outside of sandboxed environments, he is not required to be a diplomat as mainter (though it would be better, of course) and Bottles decision makes total sense - they asked to not package their software long ago as they drown in bugs and supporting non predictable environment with unknown dependencies creates too many problems for them. I can understand that, development is hard as it is, unpredictability of environment multiplies this complexity.

They are maintainers and they do what they can to support the project, so removing donate button while packaging software done by others (who asked not to do it) is a childish move. Yes it’s FOSS, but morally it sounds a bit wrong.

We ask too much of mainters when it comes to soft skills, not all of us got these, but also not all of us are FOSS maintainers. And I think we should stop asking everyone to possess all skills in the world and react on someone’s rudeness as we are 5 (not saying we shouldn’t improve).

drwankingstein@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 19 Dec 12:53 next collapse

based suse, I hate updating software and effectively bricking it, I don’t support that shit at all

mactan@lemmy.ml on 19 Dec 14:20 collapse

while gleefully shipping a miserably outdated and unstable package themselves

T0RB1T@lemmy.ca on 19 Dec 14:53 collapse

github.com/bottlesdevs/Bottles/issues/2345#issuec…

To me it looks like the devs of Bottles said that they’d be patching Bottles to remove support links in non-flatpak versions.

So… isn’t what openSUSE did in the spirit of that? Obviously, them packaging it at all is against the devs’ wishes, but… I dunno, this whole thing is a mess.

Edit: I may have confused “support links” with the “donate button”. However, I am still confused, and this situation is a mess. I sympathize with the bottles devs, because it’s good software, and they are largely volunteer developers. Beyond that? *exaggerated shrug*