Are we the reason Apple isn't helping us?

[Charles Davis]

Hi,

An Apple developer recently contacted me directly about the Wine64 radar (number 9269783). What's interesting about his response, however, is that he put in an aside to berate us for our etiquette. I am convinced that at least this developer sees us as rude, hateful creatures now, and he cited a particular bug (29922) that he filed and even offered to fix as an example. Gee, I wonder why that might be? (Hint: Look at the "To:" field.)

In your defense, I realize that Vitaliy's behavior is not representative of Wine developers as a whole, and that Jeremy's behavior wasn't exactly golden, either. I also realize that there really is no build breakage resulting from the bug, because we don't include any Objective-C headers. He was convinced that there could have been breakage, however. You--AJ, I'm talking to you in particular--did not adequately explain to him why this didn't break the build. Instead, you--Vitaliy in particular--practically yelled at him--for trying to help! By this point, he's likely told his colleagues at Apple about his experience. With guys like Vitaliy developing Wine, is it any wonder Apple doesn't want to help? Are we, the developers, the real reason Apple isn't contributing? For that matter, are we the real reason more people *in general* aren't contributing?

At the very least, we should be more welcoming of help, even from Apple. We need it. Maybe not to fix trivial non-bugs like 29922, but to make Wine a better alternative to Windows--on Mac, Linux, or anywhere. But as long as people like Vitaliy are yelling at potential contributors, we won't get much help beyond what we've got at CodeWeavers.

Just my two bits.

Chip