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Comment by smnrchrds | Hacker News Reader

For those who are out of the loop, the notable thing about this release is that Calibre is now using Python 3. Three years ago, Calibre author famously said he will maintain Python 2 when it reaches EOL, because it would be less work than migrating Calibre to Python 3.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/calibre/+bug/1714107

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And what was he supposed to say? Here comes some arrogant jerk, without any history in the project and announces that "Calibre needs to convert to Python 3" without offering any help or solution. Considering how big project Calibre is, Kovid's response was quite logical, it was easier to maintain Python 2 version. Later with actual contributors to the cause of migrating Calibre to Python 3 it became feasible.

Well, all distros going to remove python2, so need to convert it to python 3 isn't "Here comes some arrogant jerk, without any history in the project".

That's on top that python 3 was out for quire some time, the fate of python 2 was known. There is no point in maintaining python 2 compatibility.

"I'm going to maintain Python 2 myself once it's EOL, rather than port to Python 3" is not a logical response. Python is way bigger than Calibre.

I remember seeing that and facepalming, because I was considering contributing to the project but that just put me right off. Now it's on Python 3 I'm inclined to reconsider.

Maybe a good starting point to contributing would be helping to migrate to python 3?

> Kovid has stated numerous times that any patches which work towards python3 compatibility without hurting python2 functionality or performance would be happily accepted. Oddly enough, no one has ever taken him up on that, though a number of people have insisted it is very important that he himself do that work.

Now that the work of migrating is done?

Outside of the initial stance of wanting to maintain Python 2, I'm amazed at how much of a jerk the Arch distribution maintainer is being to everyone else.

That’s a pretty strong and broad statement. Do you have any evidence or incidents to back that up?

...the link...

My comment is a response to the comment I was replying to, that contains the link with his comments.

They do not extend to anything outside of that, so I don't think it's a broad statement. Just my opinion on his response to the Debian maintainer and other polite requests.

I somehow missed the link in the original comment, my mistake.

I don't think a volunteer who takes the time to actually reply without being outright dismissive is a jerk. They handled that thread with poise.

Completely disagree with you on that, he comes across as someone who is tired of always being asked the same questions, who does work to solve the problem and is frustrated that a lot of people are unappreciative of Kovid's work. Given how much criticism and entitled requests opensource maintainers have to deal with, it's not a surprise to me that he'd be tired. But I do think that he is still well reasoned in the way he expresses himself.

I think he completely shut down any respectful discussion with the Debian maintainer. It's not just discussion with the requests from users where I think he was rude, though I can understand his position more, but his attitude to the Debian maintainer is unfortunate

So if A says something incorrect, B can't set the record straight because that's unfortunate and shuts down any respectful discussion?

I'm thinking that reactions to this maintainer's answers probably align to which side of the discussion one often find themselves.

I disagree as an Arch user; Eli is more than just some packager, he does a metric boatload of work for the distro and has his fingers in many pies. He is speaking from a position of knowledge and experience and replying with skilled authority on the subject matter.

I make no value proposition on his work, knowledge or the extents of his role. I simply quoted the role he mentioned in the link, which makes no mention of his other contributions to Arch.

Regardless, I find his tone and attitude quite condescending to the Debian maintainer.

But is he wrong, even if true? A Debian maintainer popped in and basically said "we're doing nothing wrong" while there's discreet evidence to the contrary, Debian has altered the upstream code based on the opinion of one person and disabled features of the software.[1]

[1] https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=640026

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