[Python-Dev] Python-3 transition in Arch Linux (original) (raw)

Laurens Van Houtven lvh at laurensvh.be
Thu Nov 4 23:40:46 CET 2010

On Thu, Nov 4, 2010 at 5:44 AM, Allan McRae <allan at archlinux.org> wrote:

According to #python, we are all idiots....

I realize this is not really what your message was about and for sake of brevity you used a bit of a hyperbole, but like Thomas I would still like to nip in right there. #python is a pretty big channel. I think everyone understands that reducing it in its entirety to a single opinion as inflammatory as "you're all idiots" is at best oversimplifying and at worst offensive.

(FWIW, Thomas has already said a bunch of stuff I completely agree with, so +1 everything he said.)

What is true is that there's a new and temporary "NO ARCH" rule in the topic, and it's the for the same reason there's a "NO LOL" in the topic: to keep the signal to noise ratio high. Apparently there is a large number of packages (or perhaps just commonly used ones) either in Arch itself or AUR that didn't work anymore. This caused a lot of people to complain about problems that are actually Arch-specific problems: not really something #python is there for nor something it is good at helping with. That wouldn't be helping people with Python, that would be helping people with Arch. It is not intended as, and should not be interpreted as, some kind of public "declaration of war" against Arch. It simply means that #python isn't going to do Arch-specific support for packages that no longer work after an update, since that's not our job nor expertise.

I don't think grudges or misunderstandings help anyone, and Python in particular, further along. I think I've demonstrated that I'm eager to get rid of them before. If you (or anyone else for that matter) are worried about behavior or policy in #python in the future (I assure you there's really not as much as people generally seem to think there is) and would like clarification, there's an easy way to access a list of the ops:

/msg chanserv access #python list

Or just shout "are there any ops on" in #python whenever you like. These people should be able to tell you what you want to know or at least point you to the right person to ask.

But basically, to reiterate a point I've made a bunch of times and have already made (not to you in particular, just in general): #python is a bunch of people, please don't extrapolate the opinions of a few to the opinions of many. It's easy and tempting, but it often leads to demonizing a bunch of people and putting words in people's mouths which they didn't say or even agree with.

cheers and good luck lvh

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