How far would hostile distributions go to hurt application developers? | TheEvilSkeleton Table of Contents<br>Introduction§<br>The Linux desktop has an upstream maintenance problem due to many reasons for it, such as the lack of paid work. No one is entitled to a volunteer’s free time apart from the volunteer themself. This is especially true to volunteers working on upstream projects, as they are at the mercy of downstream distributions, who have the final say.<br>As an upstream contributor, you have no choice but to meticulously plead for any reasonable request to be granted by difficult downstreams, treating them as if they are some kind of deity. Not doing so with the utmost respect can get you on their naughty list, which they can then use against you just because the license ‘allows’ it and they can get away with it; even shamelessly use the ‘you chose the wrong license’ card when they have nothing else to add.<br>We have seen several instances of downstreams misusing their power while simultaneously abusing upstreams’ generosity and free time to do whatever they want. This was especially true with XScreenSaver and Debian in the past, which Debian has since changed its policies to communicate better with upstreams, and more recently Bottles, OBS Studio, and Fedora. This article is specific to an even more recent incident we at GNOME Calendar have had with Linux Mint.<br>Technical Definitions§<br>There are a few technical definitions that should be understood before reading the rest of the article:<br>Upstream: A group of individuals authoring software, for example GNOME Calendar.<br>Downstream: A group of individuals building, curating, and redistributing these software to end users, for example Linux Mint.<br>The distribution model works until it impacts upstream§<br>Distribution model refers to an established model that the Linux desktop has been practicing for decades, where an end user is expected to report issues to downstream, and, if necessary, downstream relays said issue to upstream.<br>The adage that users report issues to downstream holds true up until these users start reporting them to upstream without reporting to downstream beforehand. In reality, many distributions advertise themselves as user-friendly. Users of these distributions are unaware of the distribution model, so, in good faith, they report issues to upstream without ever knowing that they should be contacting downstream.<br>Often, downstream issues have already been resolved in previous releases; however, since these issues are being reported to upstream, upstream has to regularly triage and close these invalid issues. This creates an additional burden for them because they end up spending their limited volunteer time managing these issues when it should have been downstream’s responsibility to ensure that the user is reporting to them first.<br>Contacting downstream is a burden in itself§<br>Whenever the upstream project reaches out to the hostile downstream and asks for a change, the response is usually met with the downstream bluffing by pretending to look for a solution for a nonexistent request, such as adapting the issue tracker with the implication that upstream will have to write the template(s) themselves, and then regularly update when the message is misinterpreted, just so downstream can avoid doing any actual work. That is called moving the goalposts.<br>If upstream objects to these ‘suggestions’, this is usually done with a shift in tone, as these one-sided discussions occur in the span of weeks, if not months, if not years, which quickly drains upstream’s remaining energy. When it shifts to a harsh(er) tone, the hostile downstream takes the easy way out by making remarks on that tone and acting like they are the only one being dignified; when they can, they end the discussion just because they do not like the tone and can use that tone to justify their (lack of) decision, without taking any appropriate action to remedy the underlying request.<br>As a result, they continue to mislead users into reporting issues to upstream, but this time intentionally and out of spite simply because free software licenses do not disallow abusing people’s generosity and free time. However, you will see later that this has nothing to do with free software.<br>Linux Mint and GNOME Calendar§<br>For years, we have been dealing with users reporting Linux Mint’s broken packaging of GNOME Calendar to us, that were either never present or addressed releases ago.<br>To name a few examples:<br>https://pouet.chapril.org/@parrot_33/116374864921983890(Archive)<br>https://vmst.io/@doctroid/116542487573304110 (dead...