Re: Contacting authors
Martin Schulze writes ("Contacting authors"):
> tonight I was thinking about implementing @authors.debian.org which
> would enable a way for us to get in touch with the upstream authors of
> some piece of software without the need of looking into the copyright
> file or digging in the source if the maintainer forgot to add the
> authors email into that file.
>
> What do you think about it?
>
> Example: hypermail@authors.debian.org would redirect the mail to
> kent@landfield.com who is the current developer of hypermail.
I'm sorry to say that I think this is a bad idea. I think most
authors wouldn't want to be contacted in this way - I know that I in
my capacity as upstream author wouldn't.
Making it easy to contact the upstream author(s) in this way will
encourage our users to contact them directly, and many (most) of these
messages will be about Debian-specific things. One of the main
reasons we have package maintainers is to filter bogus mail, so that
upstream authors don't get bombarded with questions and bug reports
about Debian.
Furthermore, the procedures and requirements for contacting upstream
authors vary greatly: in some cases the upstream author suggests use
of a mailing list, in others they're an individual, in some cases a
group. Sometimes mail to this address will generate an automatic
response; sometimes it will bounce. Packages vary in the conventions
expected when contacting the upstream author: for example, some
authors really like patches, others loath them. I don't think we can
harmonise this (or that it would be desirable to do so), and we
shouldn't pretend to people that we have done by presenting a
harmonised interfac3e.
Clueful people who know that they want to contact the upstream authors
can read the details in /usr/doc - most packages include there the
upstream READMEs etc. which give instructions for contacting the
authors.
Thanks, and sorry to be negative,
Ian.
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