Re: What doing with an uncooperative maintainer ?
"Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@debian.org> wrote:
> Talk with the maintainer. Or NMU. Or make noise on -devel.
> But don't "fork" packages.
I agree and disagree. Talking with the maintainer works
sometimes. Sometimes one is in a position to NMU. Sometimes
it helps to make noise on debian-devel. But sometimes there
are fundamental disagreements about how something should be
packaged and then it must be possible for two competing
packages to exist in Debian between which users can make a
choice; otherwise you are giving maintainers the same rights
as software proprietors: _they_ control the code; _you_ can't
change it (while remaining within the Debian framework) even
if you are willing to do the work. I say you should _not_
give maintainers that kind of power -- the power to stop
others from doing a better job. That kind of power will
inevitably be abused, and has already been abused. Every
maintainer should face the threat of competition from someone
else who thinks he or she can do a better job. That is an
essential freedom in open source development.
There are already many programs in Debian that are packaged
in different flavors. Most of these are upstream-stable and
upstream-developmental variants. These variants serve the
needs of different sorts of users. From reading this thread
it is my impression that gqview falls into this group: the
gqview maintainer has a conservative packaging policy while
his critics want to run the latest version. Unless one side
gives in, this seems like adequate grounds for a fork.
--
Thomas Hood
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