Re: Resignation and uploads
[Wouter Verhelst]
> Oh, and here's something else to ponder: Maybe, just maybe, James
> has more time to go to Ubuntu below zero than he has to handle
> keyring updates because he prioritizes by what gets the bills
> paid. As most of us do, I suppose.
Yes, most of us have changing priorities, and am not able to follow up
all our Debian commitments all the time. I am convinced this is the
case with the keyring maintainer James as well, and that he will
process the backlog as quickly as he can.
But as we know that the priorities changes over time, and that some
times real life or other commitments demand our focus from time to
time, it is vital to plan and prepare for this, and make sure no
privileged position in Debian depends on one persons priorities. And
as keyring maintenance is a privileged position (I can not take over
immediately it if James is not doing it), we need to make sure the
processing of key changes do not stop when James am unable to handle
the incoming queue of requests.
Do we know how many requests are in the queue? Is the queue growing
or shrinking? Is the current processing speed enough to actually
empty the queue some time in the future? It would be interesting to
know these things, and one way to make it possible for others to
monitor the status of the keyring maintenance would be to make sure
the processing is transparent. Is it? I do not know, but hope it is.
If it isn't, it is very hard for others to take over if James suddenly
is unable to process the requests at all.
I believe it is important for Debian as a project to make sure the
privileged positions have good redundancy. (I call this the bus
factor - aka how many will have to be run over by a bus before the
project/process/work stops. A bus factor <= 1 is very bad. :).
At the moment, several of the privileged positions in debian seem to
have a very low bus factor, and we should address this as a project to
make sure the task being done by the people in these positions do not
grind to a complete halt when their real world commitments take "too
much" of their time.
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