On Tue, 2008-04-15 at 02:01 +0000, Bob Atkins wrote:

> I don't know why you are resisting this change. I took the time to 
> report the bug, proposed a fix /_*and*_/ contributed the patch that 
> would make the Python build process more standard relative to the vast 
> majority of open source packages that use autoconf. I am glad to see 
> that my patch appears to be generic enough that it works on other 
> platforms as well. I didn't have to post a bug report let alone 
> contribute a patch but, I believe strongly that is what open source is 
> all about. As the maintainer you don't have to accept either the bug or 
> the patch but, resisting without good cause will discourage further 
> contributions - certainly from me because I won't waste my time 
> submitting something when I know that a maintainer of a package is being 
> closed minded. We do a lot of work with open source software here and it 
> is our policy to contribute back to the community as much as possible. 
> However, when we run into a brick wall we quickly give up because we 
> can't justify the time and effort. As an example, we have completely 
> suspended all contributions to the asterisk project. We operate a very 
> large asterisk environment with a lot of fixes and improvements that I 
> am sure lots of others would love to have but the maintainer's attitude 
> was that a Sun Solaris platform was not important. What the maintainer 
> doesn't know is that many of our fixes and changes affect /_*all*_/ 
> platforms. So now they get nothing from us and the asterisk community as 
> a whole is deprived of the benefits of our work. I also know that many 
> others have also suspended contributions for the same reason and as a 
> result the asterisk package suffers. The resistance on your part to 
> recognizing this problem and a fix is unjustified.

Bob just took the words from my mouth. Martin, with all respect, your
resistance in accepting this patch is making things much harder that
they really are. The main point here is that this pacth actually
*doesn't* break anything in Python!

Please, take a time to consider our proposal.

Thanks,