Re: RFC: moving packages to project/orphaned

["Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@debian.org>]

>> Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de> writes:

 > Orphaned packages list debian-qa as maintainer. That means all bug reports
 > go to debian-qa. There are several people that take care of these packages
 > and try to fix bugs (e.g. the recent security problems in ntop).
 > 
 > When you say these packages are non-interesting: There's noone who wants
 > to maintain them at the moment. Does this mean that there are no users of
 > these packages?

 The way I see it, this is an argument in favor of moving the packages
 to project/orphaned.  In the list I just mailed it reads:

 | Total number of packages offered up for adoption: 91
 | Total number of orphaned packages: 86

 that's 86 packages "someone" is taking care of.  I need to mix and
 match Packages with the BTS database, but I don't think the number will
 be much lower, and I fear it might increase.  Let me make some specific
 examples:

   dotfile (68092), 50 days orphaned
       Rev Depends: dotfile-rtin dotfile-elm dotfile-bash dotfile-procmail
       dotfile-ipfwadm dotfile-fvwm1 dotfile-tcsh dotfile-fvwm2

 First of all, the real age is ~ 10 months.  Such a package becomes
 outdated because it tries to keep up with the functionality in rtin,
 elm, bash, procmail, ipfwadm, fvwm1, tcsh and fvwm2.  Unless dotfile is
 dead upstream, I can imagine the package is outdated already.

   python-mxdatetime (68596), 46 days orphaned
       Rev Depends: task-python-dev python-popy

 I don't know if this is really the case, but this needs to be kept up
 to date with the python packages.  Is debian-qa really doing this?

 My point is, while I trust the people in -qa to do their job, there's
 some ammount of slack that needs to be removed.  I favor removing that
 slack automatically, but I'm eager to be convinced otherwise.


                                    Marcelo