On Wed, Dec 21, 2005 at 02:07:30AM +0200, Lars Wirzenius wrote: > Several ideas have been floating around for years on how to improve > this situation, of which I'd like to mention three. While I've here > used the number of bugs as the measure of a package's quality, > the same ideas might help with other aspects, like getting new > upstream versions packaged soon after they're released. > * Team maintenance. If a package is maintained by a team, > there are more people sharing the work. When a team works > well, more people look at the package, and finding and > fixing problems is more effective. There is less work per > person, so things don't lag as much. A well-working team > is a good thing. > As an example, the Debian GNOME team seems to work really > well. Transitions to the next upstream version happen > quite smoothly these days. OTOH, sometimes "team maintenance" means "no one takes responsibility for the package." I've dealt with release critical bugs on packages where the Maintainer field pointed to a "team" mailing list, there were several Uploaders listed for the package, and the bug sat unattended for well over a month for no apparent reason. I've also *been* part of maintainer teams where all the members of the team were busy people, and bugs tended to linger because they were somebody else's problem. Anyway, I agree that team maintenance can be a force for good. I also agree with the rest of your mail, including the call for a more proactive QA team. Cheers, -- Steve Langasek Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS Debian Developer to set it on, and I can move the world. vorlon@debian.org http://www.debian.org/
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