Re: dicussion about patches ... ignoring patches make motivation to provide them fall

[Petter Reinholdtsen <pere@hungry.com>]

[Olaf van der Spek]
> So what do you think about long-term ignored bug reports?  Do you
> think that should not be considered any issue/problem?

It is definitely something we should try to address.  When I run into
those myself for issues that are important to me, I try to contact the
maintainer, asking if he needs help.  I also try to submit bugs into
bts to solve the issue, and when that is relevant, try to push the
patches solving the issue to upstream.  If the maintainer wants help,
I try to become a co-maintainer or find someone else that can become a
co-maintainer, and if the maintainer is not giving any response, I
report the maintainer to mia@qa, to get the process started to orphan
the packages and possibly take over the maintenance.  Normally I get a
nice reply from the maintainer, acknowledging that he is running out
of time to maintain the given package, and welcoming patches and
reviews on the package bugs.

So yes, I believe we need to work on the long-term "ignored" bugs. :)

> Why do claim that can be the only reason a patch is being ignored?

Parse error.  I am no talking about the only reason why bugs are being
ignored, I am talking about what assumptions are useful to make about
ignored bugs when no information is provided by the maintainer.