Re: Regarding unresponsive Debian maintainers (was: Re: Open-Source environments for Java)

[Cesar Martinez Izquierdo <dispiste@gmail.com>]

El Lunes 23 Mayo 2005 12:32, Jeroen van Wolffelaar escribió:
> There is the MIA effort, led by myself, that does periodically look for
> activity for all maintainers and inquire if activity is lacking.
> However, this takes a bit of time, and also, it does benefit to have
> tips about specific maintainers, because it is impossible to simply look
> at all maintainers, one needs to rely on some heuristic to try to detect
> inactive maintainers.
>
> The past half year or so there hasn't been much MIA activity from
> myself, mainly because as Andrew Suffield mentions, this is not the time
> for big changes, but more importantly, the release process at the moment
> can beter benefit of attention. If you have specific
> maintainers/packages, please send a mail to mia@qa.debian.org. See also
> http://bugs.debian.org/wnpp (and the archive page thereof) and look for
> bugs submitted by Martin Michlmayr or myself, and you'll notice how many
> packages actually get orphaned by this effort. It's just a tad slow
> process, and if apparantly nobody cares enough to NMU and/or raise
> issues with a package on some mailinglist, orphaning isn't of much use
> to the user either -- the package probably ultimately gets removed then.
>
> I do plan to start up a more structural package checking effort after
> Sarge is released, hopefully addressing at least part of your concerns.
>
> --Jeroen

However there are some developers who are not MIA, as they upload new 
versions, but they ignore bugs for months/years, maybe because a lack of time 
or other reasons.

I understand that we can't force them to orphan their packages (or yes?), but 
at least the project should emphasize that orphaning a package or accepting a 
co-maintainer is not a reason to feel ashamed. On the contrary, it is a way 
to help Debian to advance, so they can be proud.

Maybe a polite email from the MIA effort to maintainers with long-standing 
bugs (and no activity on them) could help. Something like:

"Your package has the following long-standing bugs:
#xxxx Description
#yyyy Description

Remember that Debian maintainers' obligations include to track and solve all 
bugs, not only RC-bugs. If you are in lack of time, please consider to accept 
a co-maintainer or to orphan the package."

I think this would help to the health of the project.

Regards,

 César