Hi all. I'd like to ask if anyone has any comments on bugzilla bug 140214. This bug is in regards to the removal in Fedora Core of the X utility programs xbiff, xmessage, and xcalc. Are there Fedora Core developers on this list who can comment? The gist of the problem is that one developer, Mike A. Harris, has decided to remove these programs from the xorg-x11 RPM. He has never given any reason for doing so and it can only be surmised that be believes that these programs are superfluous, presumably because he doesn't use them. The number of users of these programs is probably not terribly large, but then again, the size of these programs and the difficulty in maintaining them is incredibly small (they have been a part of the base X system for about 20 years now and as far as I know there has not been a bug or maintaince issue with these programs in 20 years!). Mike A. Harris seems unwilling to consider the needs of users with respect to this issue. He has simply decreed that these programs shall no longer be in Fedora Core and gives no reason for this. I can appreciate wanting to "clean up" and remove programs which are no longer useful, but these programs *are* useful, at least to some users, and furthermore, they add only literally a couple of hundred K (at most) to the distribution. He has suggested that the X.org software will be removing these programs from its core system in the future. Perhaps that is true, but why not wait until *then* to remove them from Fedora Core? Why pre-emptively remove them without providing for any other place to put them? Why not create a new small optional RPM called X-old-utils or something like that? And why not wait until the X.org project decides to remove these programs to do that? The simple fact is that it has taken MORE maintainance work to prematurely remove these programs, for no apparent reason, than it ever did to just leave them in. And it in no way satisfies any user to have these programs removed nor does it improve the Fedora Core distribution. The most frustrating thing is that Mike A. Harris simply gives no reason for removing them, and seems to refuse to respond to user's pleas to leave these insignificant programs in the x11-xorg RPM. All that is necessary to put these programs back in is the removal of two or three comment characters that Mike A. Harris added to the spec file. That's it. Why won't he do this? Are these decisions made by a collective of developers at Fedora or is it all the work of just one person? If there is collective input on this, can I please hear some thoughts from other developers? If it's the work of just one person, can I please at least hear a reasonable explanation from that person about why this has been done? The bug has been closed as WONTFIX but I'm really hoping that the needs of users can be heard here and that we can get this issue sorted out. Thank you, and best wishes, Bryan ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Bryan Ischo bryan@xxxxxxxxx N, R, 6 New York, NY, USA http://www.ischo.com RedHat Linux 7.3 ------------------------------------------------------------------------
