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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>

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