[Python-Dev] Python-3 transition in Arch Linux

[Laurens Van Houtven]

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