Re: Four days

[Michael Gilbert <michael.s.gilbert@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 5 Oct 2010 16:30:37 +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> > One is to use the mentors mailing list as the maintainer for mentee
> > packages.  That way the burden of quickly orphaned packages is dispersed
> > over the whole set of mentors rather than just one.  Perhaps that will
> > encourage more DD participation since they won't stick themselves with a
> > lot of orphaned packages.
> 
> To clarify: the intended point of this proposal is to solve the perceived
> problem that DDs don't sponsor packages because they're concerned that
> they'll end up taking responsibility for a package if the maintainer ups and
> leaves?
> 
> I don't actually see that as a problem.  There are simple ways to deal with
> orphaned packages, regardless of the way the upload was made, and they work. 
> If a package I sponsor is abandoned by the maintainer, it gets NMUed,
> orphaned and assigned to debian-qa like any other, and is then available for
> adoption.

OK, I've at least seen Paul Wise state this excuse as the reason to
avoid sponsoring packages, and I would bet there is a lot more of that
sentiment out there, just not expressed here.

If you can mitigate that concern via better awareness about the
orphaning process, then I think that would be great.

Best wishes,
Mike