Re: Dogme05: Team Maintenance
On Sun, 2005-08-14 at 14:15 +0000, W. Borgert wrote:
> as a conclusion of many discussions at DebConf5, I propose to
> maintain all packages by teams.
It's a nice ideal.
> It is useful to
> invite non-DDs, esp. upstream developers and people from Debian
> derivatives to participate in such teams.
I've tried that. No luck yet.
> Assumptions:
No arguments against I through IV.
> V. If not at least two maintainers can be found for a particular
> package, it is not worthwhile to have it in Debian, at least
> not in a release. experimental is OK.
Says who? I maintain some packages like this. Let's say I support 50
to 100 niche users for a given package, but I'm the only developer in
the user community who cares to maintain the package in Debian. I
maintain the package well, and my users are happy. I would not be at
all happy if my package were forced out of Debian because it's "not
worthwhile". I think that would be a terrible injustice to my users.
> VI. The advantages of team maintenance outweigh the problem of
> team maintenance overhead.
In my case, there would be a team of one. I could take a "build it and
they will come" approach, I suppose, but unless by creating the project
actually attracted other developers, the team maintenance overhead
(basically just startup costs) would outweigh the advantages. Let's
just say I'm not overly optimistic about my prospects, given my failure
so far to attract another developer to co-maintain with me. Upstream is
just too busy doing upstream work, and doesn't want to be bothered with
packaging, which I seem to do well enough without their help.
> VII. Team maintainence helps us to collaborate with upstream
> and derivers.
I collaborate just fine with upstream. However, this collaboration with
derviers sounds interesting. I haven't yet spoken with any derivers
responsible for my packages. That might be an overlooked source of help
for me. Thanks for the reminder that they're out there.
> VIII. Packages not maintained by teams are not to go into
> unstable/testing/stable.
Again: will a team of one, with a "help wanted" sign hanging on it
suffice? I am ideologically supportive of team maintenance, but
pessimistic about the prospects of some useful packages ever having more
than one maintainer, because they serve a small subgroup of specialized
users within Debian.
> IX. As alioth becomes even more important to Debian, we will
> have to strengthen (HA-ing) this resource.
"HA-ing". I'm sorry. I don't know what you mean.
> X. Teams shall meet online or in sauna. They are allowed to do
> DDR or ballroom dancing.
Works for me.
Ben
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