[QGIS-Developer] Bug #21460?

Tue Apr 9 02:34:14 PDT 2019

On Tue, Apr 9, 2019 at 11:16 AM Matthias Kuhn <matthias at opengis.ch> wrote:

> Hi
>
>
> I wonder, what is the best way to answer a question like
>
> > I was wondering when issue x is getting some attention?
>
> Assuming
>  - that "issue x" is very important for a user who asks the question
>  - that "issue x" is one of 3000 open issues for a developer
>
> The best for the user would obviously be someone replying "Oh sorry, I
> missed that one. I'll have a look immediately".
> But in reality, unfortunately we all have limited time resources. So this
> just would not be true. To me informing people "how to get things done" is
> not the nicest answer to get, but it's a very honest one.
>
> With all best intentions
> Matthias
>

Hi  Matthias,

I cannot agree more, I think that we (developers) are in general very happy
if we can help anyone that has an issue with QGIS and we do everything we
can to help, but unfortunately the users are many, the issues are also many
and we definitely need to feed our families and our pets (that's basically
the same that not having enough time for unpaid work).

So, I also think that we are giving an honest answer.

I personally get a little bit upset when people push too much (basically
asking me to work for free to solve their problems), on the contrary I'm
usually very happy to help someone that is asking politely.

What it is important to stress is that hiring someone to fix an issue is
not the only way to get things done, for instance I am generally more happy
to help someone who I know as a very active member of the QGIS or
open-source community, because I know that there is a fair balance between
what this person gives and takes.

On the other end of the scale are some corporate users that I imagine are
saving a lot of money by using QGIS and give back just nothing.

Last but not least, as Régis pointed out, we have some funds for bug-fixing
before the releases, the donations from the sponsors and from the users
make this possible and these funds can act as multiplier for the
unpaid-volunteer bug-fixing work that inevitably continues after the
releases.

Let's just find the best way to communicate this to the users, Nyall's
posts looks good to me but I really like the idea of having translations
and culture-specific texts to better explain the concept.

> *09 April 2019 10:25 Richard Duivenvoorde <rdmailings at duif.net>
> <rdmailings at duif.net> wrote:*
>
> On 09/04/2019 03.41, Nyall Dawson wrote:
>
> > If you can suggest any ways to improve the wording of that post (while
> > keep the core message intact), please let me know.
>
> >>>> On Mon, Apr 8, 2019 at 4:30 AM Paolo Cavallini wrote:
> >>>>>
> >>>>> may I suggest you an interesting read?
> >>>>>
> https://nyalldawson.net/2016/08/how-to-effectively-get-things-changed-in-qgis/
>
> I want to second Cory, to me it also feels a little rude to tell a
> 'user' (not a developer) to try to code or pay for a dev. And I'm a
> dutchie, known for their blunt talk :-)
>
> @Nyall: in my opinion your followup article:
>
> http://nyalldawson.net/2016/08/how-to-effectively-get-things-changed-in-qgis-a-follow-up/
> has a better 'tone' for non developers.
>
> We should probably mix your followup article with the first one and put
> it in the website (in the 'user' section) so it is translatable, so
> translators can maybe even add more 'cultural politness' to it if needed?
>
> WHO wants to do that (you can earn karma points if you do this !!)??
>
> We should also make clear that it IS OK to ask for the community to have
> a look at the an issue which makes your(!) live a hell. But also make it
> clear that to be fair your problems are not always the problems of
> somebody else. Same goes for commercial software by the way, only they
> are not as transparent as we are. And that we are humans with not enough
> time to solve all the problems in the world.
>
> STILL I'm not sure what the right tone is to tell people to read such a
> text though... people (me included!) will feel a little offended anywat
> when not helped but sent to a page to read what they should do...
>
> I think Geoserver does a good job:
>
>
> https://github.com/geoserver/geoserver/wiki/Successfully-requesting-and-integrating-new-features-and-improvements-in-GeoServer
> And Ian's talk: (though it can maybe be polished a little):
> https://www.ianturton.com/talks/foss4g.html#/how-to-earn-support
>
>
> @Cory: please stay on the good side :-)
>
> May I suggest to make your bug report even better by adding data and
> instructions so for an average developer, it is 10 minutes work to
> replicate your issue? Or should we just create the table and start
> editing? If so please add some steps. For example some googling revealed
> to me that I need: "CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS "uuid-ossp";" to use
> the uuid_generate_v4() function you use?
>
> Also make sure it is actually a QGIS problem, looking into it, it is.
> But it is also a data-schema issue, as you define the problematic
> columns as:
> predecessors uuid[] DEFAULT ARRAY[]::uuid[],
> And the "uuid[]" is not a very common type in the gis world.
>
> If I'm correct '{""}' (what QGIS now uses for NULL values if the column
> has an array type) is a textual representation of an array with one
> string in it. Would it be better to do '{null}' or even '{}' instead?
> Can you try to create an update query with '{null}' and '{}' values in
> the empty array fields?
> And add these queriies to the bug report?
>
> Regards,
>
> Richard Duivenvoorde
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Alessandro Pasotti
w3:   www.itopen.it
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