Thanks to Michael (and others?) for providing patches, generally the most valuable contribution in a bug report.
Jamie, you could have deleted all e-mail reports from Debian users in the time it took you to write this Easter egg :) (Just responding to the productive participants first, since this may get long) Please calm down people, a little pop-up and an extra click is annoying but it is not the end of the world. The pop-up message may be direct, but is it not attacking any minorities, genders or sexual preferences. There is no need for name calling and disrespectful talk here. Especially the Debian contributors around should know there is a code of conduct that should be followed here in bug reports as in any other Debian activity. If you are not contributing, but are here to whine or me-too, your presence is not needed or helpful, so please go back to fecebook/riddit. Also know that any changes to the stable distribution is a long and difficult process, so patience is needed by all parties. There is often a lack of respect, consideration and gratitude towards the upstream author of software. Creating the software and generating original content is the hardest and most meritable part. It seems some people feel entitled just because they are repackaging software or even are being able to install it. Jamie has done a phenomenal job of creating and improving XScreenSaver, and gives it away for free to us to use and modify as we want, what more can one ask for? He is also an exemplary upstream in that he follows the xscreensaver bug tracker in Debian, and often comments on bug reports. We are grateful for this and wishes more upstreams would do the same. Granted, the bug reporters don't always get to hear what they wanted :) but overall it is a privilege to have direct communication with the original software creator. It is understandable that upstreams are frustrated by seeing users stuck with older versions. It is sometimes frustrating for the packagers too, and the users. However it is the way a stable distribution works. The concept of stable releases is not unknown to the Jamie either, in fact he gives no access to any development repository or snapshots of XScreenSaver, and sometimes takes long between his releases. Version 5.30, which he hates us for having in stable, was still the latest release but already almost a year old when we entered the freeze at that time. If you look at the upstream changelog, the changes since then up to 5.34 are minor, and heavily focused on iOS issues that are not of interest to our users. It can be added that the one security issue that came up last year, was fixed immediately in squeeze and sid when we were notified. So the "old" version in stable is not a big issue, but a small irritation for every little fix that upstream has added later. Now it is clear for everybody that we don't want software to suddenly change by itself in a stable distribution. As stable distribution users we want our software to work as it did yesterday unless we explicitly request changes. The introduction of the present Easter egg was an awkward gesture by the author and an oversight from our side to let it slip in. This is a small technical issue that we can solve easily. The author wants to make a point about our distribution of older versions, and this is indeed a general question that should be discussed. This is of strategical importance, but does not belong here in this bug report. Debian users should always report bugs to Debian and not directly upstream. So the author being spammed by Debian users on old versions should in principle not happen. If the current software encourages people to send bug reports to the author we will look into and fix this. It is possible that I have not read all 400 comments here, but I think I have got enough information to work on the problem. It is good to see so many care for, and use, xscreensaver. Usually this is a quiet place. Thanks, all. Tormod
