Re: "Hijacking packages for fun and profit" BoF at DebConf
On Sat, Jul 21, 2012 at 11:08:15AM +0200, Luk Claes wrote:
>
> > Other than all the above, I have read interesting ideas on objective criteria
> > in Steve McIntyre's report. Basically my point of this e-mail is that I
> > welcome a debate on changing the MIA and NMU procedures to introduce objective
> > criteria with short periods of time so that it becomes easier for anyone
> > interested to improve quality of packages in Debian.
>
> Taking over a package is not an NMU nor is it waiting for someone to be
> completely MIA. An NMU is usually once for fixing bugs (so not updating
> packaging, not moving it to another patch or revision control system and
> the like). Being MIA is usually not even answering mails or IRC pings in
> general for an extended time frame which is quite a bit further than not
> caring about one package IMHO. Currently the MIA Team does not orphan
> individual packages unless the maintainer agrees, so usually it's
> orphaning all or none.
Your point seems to be that we currently don't have a procedure for orphaning
individual packages.
>
> The normal procedure to take over a package should be consent with the
> maintainer or the formal adoption procedure. Though I think it would be
> good to also be able to take over a package without the need to declare
> the maintainer MIA. One month without reply to an intent to take over
> mail (or should that be bug report?) seems fair when the maintainer is
> not on VAC (which usually is private), so I guess the devil is in the
> details.
You seem to propose a light-weighted procedure to mark individual unmaintained
packages as orphaned (so that anyone interested can take over maintenance).
I propose the following for orphaning individual packages :
Anyone can mark a package as orphaned after the following steps have been
completed : Someone submits an "intent to orphan" in the bts with an
explanation of why he/she thinks that the package needs a new maintainer.
Anyone can submit this "intent to orphan". At least three DD's second the
"intent to orphan" on the same bug report with a cc to the maintainer. And the
maintainer does not respond within one month after the the third second.
Comments ?
Regards,
Bart Martens
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