On Mon, Jan 23, 2006 at 06:56:56PM +0100, Amaya wrote:
#include <hi.h>
and thanks for your time to write such a useful note about how you and
others are keeping Debian great!
<much snip-age>
>
> It leads me to think Debian accounts should expire in a year of no
> activity and packages be automatically orphaned, but it is just a side
> effect of RC over-dose, and I really need to go back to my own packages
> when this is over.
<story>
I was thinking of an analogy of a car rental store. A company (Debian)
owns a car (a package) and 'hires' a mechanic (maintainer) to look after
it. Folks come in from time to time and rent the car (use the package).
From time to time folks who rent the car notice problems with the car
and tell the mechanic about them. So, when the car is brought back,
night after night, he/she fixes the car. And then folks come in again
and rent the car and notice the improvements. But after sometime, the
car starts to fall apart and then the mechanic is no where to be found. It
seem like the company owners should ask where the mechanic went and the
mechanic should either leave a note (out to lunch, on vacation, on
personal leave) or before leaving, should tell the company to find a
fill-in mechanic, add a mechanic to the mechanic team or if no notice is
given, start looking for a new mechanic who reports back when he/she
will be out.
</story>
<comment>
It seems various people have sought to address some of the issue of
lack of package maintanership: low threshold NMU policy. This is to
combat the 'fiefdom' idea which is a non-technical issue. And the idea
of a one year term on @debian.org accounts and official maintainer
status for their packages is a techincal solution to the problem of
'fiefdom's.
</comment>
<idea>
Folks are away for legitimate reasons: paid-work, family obligations,
sickness, lack of /bin/sleep ;-). If folks said: "I want to continue to
work on package X but will be away for <time period>" where <time
period> was not large enought to warrant concern for the package upkeep,
then fine. Otherwise the person should seek to have someone fill-in for
their time or they could choose to hand it over to someone else. That
could be done with a list for all packages where DD,NM and others could
signup for wanting to work on the package. Otherwise the list could be
used as a way for others to seek a person to address an issue raised by
new upstream, an RC bug or security issue.
</idea>
Unfortunatley it does't address all issues for package upkeep when the
maintainer is MIA and no one is to be found to continue the work.
Again,
thanks to all who do great work and contribute much to world
domination^H^H^H^H^Debian!
Kev
--
counter.li.org #238656 -- goto counter.li.org and be counted!
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