On Thu, Feb 12, 2004 at 10:16:38PM +1000, Anthony Towns wrote: > On Thu, Feb 12, 2004 at 10:23:52AM +0100, Tim Dijkstra wrote: > > These people do not 'own' these jobs, do they? > Well, yes, they do, just as package maintainers 'own' their packages. The > people who do the work are the ones that get to make the decisions. The concern I've seen expressed in this thread seems to be "there is work that isn't getting done, and we'd like to help, but the people who currently 'own' these jobs are unresponsive." When this happens with packages, the next step is usually to NMU/orphan/hijack the package. Do you believe something similar would be applicable in the case of ports? Furthermore, what should our expectations be when one of the port maintainers in question has a standing objection to anyone NMUing his packages? Keeping our ports well-maintained is far more important to the success of the project, generally, than keeping any individual package well-maintained. This means both that the contributions of port maintainers should be esteemed (and we should therefore not make their lives miserable), *and* that Debian developers should take an interest in the ongoing health of the ports. When the line between these two is as fine as it seems to be here, I think this is cause for concern, and something we need to discuss openly as a project. In light of this, communicating with the larger developer community about the status of critical pieces of infrastructure should not be viewed as a "waste of time" as some have suggested in this thread; communication from the parties involved is the only way that anyone else can tell the difference between a transient problem that's being addressed behind the scenes and a major catastrophe that needs someone to step in and help out. Proactive communication saves time by keeping people from getting the idea (as will inevitably happen from time to time) that threads like this are called for. While I don't think flamage like the present is ever really called for, I do share the underlying concern that two-way communication about port status doesn't seem to happen generally. -- Steve Langasek postmodern programmer
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