Re: buildd administration
Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> > Perhaps it is time for a replacement buildd network, and a new
> > delegation from the DPL for keyring maintenence?
Anthony Towns wrote:
> Whatever for, exactly?
Transparency.
You understand transparency, I know, since you practice a great deal of
transparency in your own Debian work, as is clear from your blog. Many kudos
to you for that. Another developer who practices transparency to a great
degree is Steve Langasek, who *always* seems to have time to answer a
question -- or even to respond to a comment, which is actually more than is
needed.
When things go wrong, there is no useful contact address for the buildd
maintainers or admins. There is also no feedback from buildd
maintainers/admins or keyring maintainers regarding whether a request has
been receieved. It's like dropping wishes into a wishing well and then
waiting to see whether they come true. The fact that the wishing well
appears to be working unusually well at the moment is almost beside the
point.
>The buildd network's working better today than
>it has since woody released, IMO.
Yes. I wonder why? There's no way to tell what's changed, who's done it, or
when it will stop being true.
Meanwhile, buildd.debian.org *still* isn't using Ingo Juergesmann's
much-much-better buildd.net status scripts. For no apparent reason. Certain
buildd admins aren't cooperating with the buildd status lines on that site
either. For no apparent reason. There's nobody to contact to explain why,
because the contact points for these things act like wishing wells.
To respond preemptively to one expected reply: "I don't have time to answer
these questions" is not a reasonable excuse, because if they don't have time,
they need to ask for help. If they don't think that anyone is skilled or
trustworthy enough to help with the work they're already doing, then (a)
they're probably wrong, and (b) at any rate there is certainly someone
skilled and trustworthy enough to act as 'press secretary' for them,
collecting all the questions from the outside and returning the answers to
the outside!
>I also see the keyring's been updated
>earlier this week, including both a replacement key for Horms from late
>last month, and Chip's requested updates.
Indeed, complaining on debian-devel appears to get results, doesn't it?
At least, that's the conclusion that a rational outside observer would come
to. If that's an inaccurate conclusion, it indicates that there's something
seriously wrong in the transparency of the processes.
--
Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com>
Make sure your vote will count.
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