Fanmail

Posted in General Rant on by Allan

Posting so more people can get entertainment value from this email.

From: Daniel Skowroński <daniel@dsinf.net>
Subject: –asroot

Hi Allan,
I’d like to say you are moron if you were thinking that commiting 61ba5c961e4a3536c4bbf41edb348987a9993fdb to pacman was good idea!
I am Arch Linux user becouse it allows me to do virtually anything so I manage some of my arch-based servers from root account. I also have netbook with root account only for my own reasons. And you’ve destroyed not only my routine but also several programs that were depending on that. Screw you with reverting package version or using patch from aur – it’s supposed to work out-of-the-box even on Arch.

No greetings,
Daniel Skowroński

PS. You could have at least let anybody else sign-off that imbecile commit…

9 thoughts on “Fanmail”

  1. commit 61ba5c961e4a3536c4bbf41edb348987a9993fdb
    Author: Allan McRae
    Date: Sat Mar 8 20:31:46 2014 +1000

    makepkg: Remove –asroot option

    The days of fakeroot being error ridden are long gone, so there is no
    valid reason to run makepkg as root.

  2. So this e-mail is poorly worded and will backfire on its author. However, he’s got a point : you’ve removed a possibility that people were relying upon. Were they wrong? Perhaps, but I’m not sure that you have the moral right of deciding what’s good for them.
    The huge problem with Gnome3, systemd, and a bunch of “modern” projects is that the developers are starting to take power over the users by claiming loudly that they know better. Sometimes, it’s true, and I don’t have a very strong opinion on the –asroot thing. But sometimes, it’s dead wrong, and being disruptive to users is probably not what Arch is about.

    I don’t think you should ignore the very valid complaint that you have broken a workflow (its validity notwithstanding).

    • “Developers are starting to take power over the users by claiming loudly that they know better.”

      As if it were any different in the past. Free software development follows a meritocratic approach; those who do the work decide. This is not always the optimal approach, but I’ve yet to see a better one.

  3. I would just like to say that I think it is improper conduct to repost an email that was sent to you in private in a public space, especially without anonymizing the users name and email address.
    That’s just not cool.

    (Note that this applies regardless of whether or not I agree to the content of the email).

    • I don’t care and will do it with any future email of this nature.

      • Well, this only proves that you are really a moron.
        (and I don’t care about the asroot option)

      • Which is really the right thing to do. It was a fun read on a Sunday morning 🙂

        Thanks for your work on Arch!

    • I would like to second this. No matter what’s the content of the email and I agree with it or not, that was not meant to be public.