Hi there, Since I'm overloaded with work (in and out of Debian) I'm considering orphaning a number of packages related to astronomy, they are: - openuniverse - starplot - spacechart - yale and - gliese The first three are GUIs to view astronomical date whileas the last two include astronomic data themselves. There is a reason for separating both, mainly that the legal status for this data files is not all too clear. I would rather given them all to the same person than breaking them up, since I expect that a prospective maintainer would take care of the following issues: 1.- Copyright issues, these impact on quite a number of astronomical-related packages. I made the decision of breaking the star catalogs into packages into non-free but others have not (see bug #174456 - which details some of the copyright issues). This issue should be pursued to: - determine wether or not the star data can be distributed in main (I have a number of mails that need pursuing) - contact maintainers to coordinate the use of a single data package instead of having the same star catalogs in every astronomical packages (maybe even ask for a 'star-catalog' virtual package that all could provide) This issue needs to be coordinated with other maintainers since other packages (like kstars?) might be affected. 2.- New releases (bug #169603 - startplot new version and bug #172203 - spacechart new release mainly) although the data files might need to be updated (haven't checked) 3.- The issue on wether to keep or remove openuniverse (its no longer maintained upstream, and maintainers have moved to improve celestia but it's not a full replacement for it). The relevant thread in debian-devel starts here: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2002/debian-devel-200212/msg01597.html 4.- Determine if a new section should be created for astronomic-related packages. Some are in section 'science' some in section 'math'... Of course, maintainers should also consider checking out bugs #188183 (gstar package, now orphaned), #170824 (celestia is now also orphaned) and #173440 (an ITP for yet another astronomy program: nightfall) in order to make a coordinated action. Writting an astronomy-related mini-policy for Debian could be in order. So, after all this rant, any takers? (I hope somebody raises his hand) :-) Regards Javi
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