Re: Thoughts on Debian quality, including automated testing
Erinn Clark wrote:
> For maintainers who are doing a lot of good work, there's simply not
> enough to justify more people. Once there's already a certain level of
> efficiency, adding another person is not going to increase it, and will
> likely decrease it. I can't see the point of enforcing this as a rule,
There is a point if it helps more than it hurts. That is how rules have
to be judged. Now, you might say that rules are stupid and those people
who need help should just go and get it. But experience has shown that,
too often, they don't.
How much would this rule "hurt" those lone ranger maintainers you are
talking about, the ones who package everything perfectly and cannot
possibly do any better?
It turns out that there is no need for them to be hurt at all. Lone
can carry on working as before and find a co-maintainer who won't get
in his way. But when Lone falls off his horse he'll be glad that Tonto
is nearby.
In other words, this rule can have only positive effects. :)
> > This is not a fair characterization of what the introduction of
> > a two-maintainer rule would be doing. No one should be insulted
> > by general rule changes designed to make Debian work better.
>
> Bureaucracy is often designed to do lots of things "better" and it often
> doesn't achieve them. It creates needless hassle, more 'paperwork', and
> has very few benefits besides making people feel like they've done
> something useful when they haven't.
You are saying that requiring people to find co-maintainers is
"bureaucracy"? Someone I know well recently got co-maintainers for
three of his packages by posting a single message to debian-devel.
That's less of a burden than that imposed by many another Debian rule.
Fortunately for your position, it probably won't take arguments to kill
this idea.
--
Thomas Hood
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