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Re: package ownership in Debian



On Mon, 31 Jul 2006 11:40:54 -0300, "Gustavo Franco" <gustavorfranco@gmail.com> said:

> On 7/31/06, Hubert Chan <hubert@uhoreg.ca> wrote:
>> On Sat, 29 Jul 2006 20:00:21 +0000, "Gustavo Franco"
>> <gustavorfranco@gmail.com> said:
>>
>> [...]
>>
>> > The packages that aren't under group maintenance and will never be,
>> > needs more not so strict NMU rules.
>>
>> Why?
>>

> Due to the "my stuff, don't touch that!" current approach, but (again)
> this is just IMHO.

I disagree with that.  (IMHO) I think that the "my stuff" approach has
more to do with maintainer attitude than with NMU rules.  I don't think
that loosening the NMU rules will decrease the maintainers'
possessiveness.  The current rules already authorized all DDs to make
NMUs, if you follow the procedures.  And if you follow the current NMU
rules, then the entire process will take, what, a couple of weeks?

My own opinion is that if you loosen the NMU rules, we'll get more bad
NMUs, which will result in more annoyed maintainers, which will increase
possessiveness.  (NMUs will be seen as sources of breakages, rather than
as sources of fixes.)

I also don't see why we would need to relax the NMU rules for all
packages that are not under group maintenance.  One of the packages that
I maintain is extremely tiny (relatively speaking), and at the moment
has a very slow upstream release cycle.  If a normal-severity bug
doesn't get fixed for two weeks, it's not the end of the world.  And
there is absolutely no reason why that package should be
group-maintained -- adding a group would add more overhead, and produce
no benefit.  So I don't see why that package should have looser NMU
rules than other packages, such as the GNUstep core library packages,
which are maintained by a group (even though I'm basically the only one
who maintains them), but has the potential of breaking other packages if
it is broken.

If we are going to loosen the NMU rules (or decrease the time for an
NMU), I think it should be applied to all packages, and not just
packages that are not group-maintained.

-- 
Hubert Chan - email & Jabber: hubert@uhoreg.ca - http://www.uhoreg.ca/
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