Re: Handling of (inactive) Debian Accounts
On Thu, 15 Feb 2007 18:36:33 +0100, Amaya <amaya@debian.org> said:
> Manoj Srivastava wrote:
>> So what is your oh-so-elegant solution to the MIA account problem?
> Humans problems have no technical solution.
While that is true, I don't think it is totally applicable
here. The problem we have is of maintainer accounts that dead, and
need to be removed. What we need here is a ping -- and the old
maintainer ping was much hated, so learning from that, we are trying
to get a proxy for a real maintainer ping; and only fall back to the
maintainer ping when our proxy mechanisms fail.
Now what should a ping response be like? We need an activity
that says I am still involved in the Debian project; which means that
mere mail to, say, a user list, is not enough. Uploads of packages
are the gold standard, of course.
What else should count as "this person is still functioning as
a debian developer"? Not maintaining packages means that they are
now active in roles that do not require them to be a developer --
apart from voting.
So, since package uploads, and voting for DPL is an activity
you need to be a developer in order to do, stands to reason you
count the people engaging in these activities as being somewhat
active as developers.
Now, whether merely voting, while this counts as a DD activity
should be enough to retain the rights and privileges of being a
developer, is another question. But remember, we say that not all
DD's are package maintainers, so package uploads can't count as the
sole valid activity.
On the gripping hand, I also see that a email ping response
might not be seen as a valid "I am not missing" proof -- not all
people tell the truth all the time.
manoj
--
Old age is too high a price to pay for maturity.
Manoj Srivastava <srivasta@debian.org> <http://www.debian.org/~srivasta/>
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