Re: sponsored NMU's to be forbidden (Re: How can a non-DD fix broken packages?)

[Bart Martens <bartm@knars.be>]

On Wed, May 31, 2006 at 10:03:43AM -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> On Wed, 31 May 2006, Bart Martens wrote:
> > You sure do have a point here.  But that seems to apply to both DD's and
> 
> It would appply to those who can upload (i.e. DDs right now).
> 
> > non-DD's.  I still don't see why a sponsored NMU would be bad.
> 
> It is not that sponsored NMUs are bad, it is that they are about the same as
> a normal NMU (the difference being who proposed the fix...).  Unless you are
> talking about some DD which considers sponsoring to be "upload in blind
> faith", in which case please tell us who is doing that so we can see to
> getting his upload rights revoked.

Let's say that person A proposes a fix by uploading a patch to a bug
report.  Person B is the maintainer of the package but has temporarily
no time to package the patch.  Person C is a non-DD and packages an
NMU-package using that patch, and follows the documented NMU procedure
as if he/she were a DD except the upload.  Person D sponsors the
NMU-package of person C by thoroughly verifying C's work and uploads the
package as-is, thus without repackaging it as if it's D's package.

I personally see no problem with this.  I would not forbid this.

I'm aware that person C is mentioned in the changelog of the package,
and not person D.  I don't see a problem with that.  Note that person B
can be a non-DD too, so there we have non-DD's in changelogs too.

I'm interested in some consensus about this, because I'm in the NM
queue, and I sometimes do NMU's via my sponsor.  I want to know wether
continuing that is appropriate or not.

Some parts of the documentation describe how to create an NMU package.
Those parts apply to person C.  The documentation how to do the upload
itself obviously apply to person D.

Obviously, if person D has blind faith in person C, and simply uploads
the NMU package without verification, that would be bad sponsoring.  But
that would be a discussion about appropriate sponsoring, not about the
appropriateness of sponsored NMU's.

 -- Bart Martens <bartm@knars.be>  Wed, 31 May 2006 18:56:08 +0200