Re: Debian QA Group and orphaned

[Christian Kurz <shorty@debian.org>]

Atsuhito Kohda <kohda@pm.tokushima-u.ac.jp> wrote:
> I would like to know what is the "Debian QA Group" and also
> the difference between orphaned and withdrawn packages.

Please read the Policy from Josip Rodin about this, which has been
posted recently to debian-devel, debian-policy and debian-qa. An
orphande Package is a package, where the maintainer disapperead and no
one knows what has append. Withdrawn packages are packages, where the
maintainer decide to stop his maintainership for.

> In /usr/doc/debian-policy/policy.text.gz it is written
> as follows:

>      If the maintainer of a package quits from the Debian project the
>      Debian QA Group takes over the maintainership of the package until
>      someone else volunteers for that task. These packages are called
>      _orphaned packages_.

> Does this mean that orphaned packages are not necessarily
> withdrawn but are maintained by the Debian QA Group ?

I think yes, as in the case of a withdrawn package the maintainer said,
that he will stop maintaining the package. 

> If so, when and how a package is withdrawn from distribution ?

The maintainer of a package decides if he want to withdraw one of his
packages.

> And does an orphaned package maintained by the Debian QA Group is
> really maintained by the Debian QA Group ?

Yes, but the QA-Group has long been not active. Just for some month it
has started to be active again, as more maintainers started to help in
den QA-Team. So the QA-Team takes care of his work, but the main work is
not maintaining orphaned packages but instead it's working on bugfixes
and improving the quality of the distribution.

> The above question comes from my experience that 

> - In Packages/unstable/tex/dvi2tty.html, dvi2tty is explained as
>   Debian QA Group is responsible for this Debian package. 
> - I reported a bug of dvi2tty to the BTS about one year ago
>   but it is not fixed yet.

Then why don't you just ask on Debian-QA what has happend to QA-Team?
Debian-QA has it's own mailinglist, where you can reach the members of
the QA-Team.

Cheers
       Christian
-- 
********************************************************************
* Christian Kurz                          Debian Developer/QA-Team *
*         Use Debian - a free Operating System for your PC         *
********************************************************************