On Sun, May 23, 2010 at 08:40:44AM +0200, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: > On 22/05/10 at 15:07 +0200, Ana Guerrero wrote: > > Hi, > > > > It is good to care for packages from people who are currently too busy and > > making NMUs to fix critical/very important bugs. However, lately I have been > > seeing a lot of NMUs that are being very disruptive [0], you have a couple of > > examples below [1]. (This is not against Jari or Nobihuro, they are just the > > latest examples I have seen today). > > > > I know this is done with the best intentions but if you think the package > > is in bad shape or neglected by the maintainer then it might better write > > to mia@, debian-qa@ or open a bug asking whether the package should be > > orphaned (or even removed). Both examples below are candidates to be orphaned. > > > > If you think this kind of changes are good, please start a discussion about > > changing this in the developers-reference. > > Our standard process for addressing issues with such packages is the MIA > process. However, the MIA process takes quite a lot of time, and it has > happen in the past that it was completely stalled due to a lack of > manpower. Also, there are cases where the maintainer will respond to the > MIA team, preventing the orphaning of his packages, despite not working > on his packages. Both true, unfortunately. > So, I think that preparing an NMU that fixes small problems in the > package at the same time as contacting the MIA team is a good thing. It > helps to improve the quality of Debian, and alleviates the problem of > temporarily busy maintainer. Ack. > I'd like to encourage Jari and Nobihuro to continue that work, but to > make sure that: > - they contact the MIA team about the maintainers of the packages they > NMU > - the packages they NMU are really _useful_ and should be kept in Debian > - they don't NMU actively maintained packages by mistake. If there are > documented efforts to contact the maintainer, using the DELAYED queue > with a long delay would help with that. Ack but still: - don't be too disruptive! I don't think that changing to dh7, i.e. debian/rules to the tiniest form, switching a package from dpatch to quilt to finally switch it to 3.0 (quilt) are changes that should be done, even if they seem useful. And there are more examples. I guess the problem is, as usual, where to draw the line. Hauke -- .''`. Jan Hauke Rahm <jhr@debian.org> www.jhr-online.de : :' : Debian Developer www.debian.org `. `'` Member of the Linux Foundation www.linux.com `- Fellow of the Free Software Foundation Europe www.fsfe.org
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