Re: What doing with an uncooperative maintainer ?

[Thomas Hood <jdthood@yahoo.co.uk>]

Eduard Bloch wrote:
> We discussed the issue on Saturday and decided not
> to begin with the package-fork-for-no-reason idioticy.

I don't see why it would be idiotic to fork the package.
If you can package this application better than the 
current maintainer then go ahead and do so.  Create a
new package called 'gqview-uptodate' consisting of your
packaging of gqview 1.3 .  If the gqview maintainer gets
around to packaging gqview 1.3 some day in the future
then you can turn gqview-uptodate into a metapackage for
gqview or you can port his changes over.  You will always
retain the power to make a new release of gqview-uptodate
if the gqview maintainer goes MIA again.  Mark your
package as "Provides: gqview" and it will satisfy all the
same dependencies.

Competition is healthy.  When forking is always an option,
"territorialism" is not a big problem.

Forking packages may seem like a waste of space, but it 
really isn't a waste if the two packages satisfy different
and incompatible release criteria.  In any case, forking
has to be permissible within Debian if Debian is to avoid
creating within itself exactly the kind of ownership to
which the project as a whole is fundamentally opposed.

--
Thomas Hood