On Wednesday, April 18, 2012 04:57:14 PM Thomas Goirand wrote:
On 04/18/2012 08:27 AM, Steve McIntyre wrote:
If a maintainer isn't (capable of) doing the necessary work on a
package themselves, then after a while the best thing they can do is
admit that and cede control to others. It's not an easy thing to admit
"failure" like this, but it's better to do it for the good of our
users and other developers than to continue blocking people. It's also
better for the developer involved to get away from the feelings of
guilt they may be having about not keeping up. There's no shame in
admitting a lack of time on a big volunteer project, we all understand
how this works...
This isn't aimed at the WINE maintainers (I didn't read the bug report,
and I don't really care about this package) but...
what can we do if the maintainer doesn't admit his lack of time or his
lack of skills/knowledge? My understanding is that in Debian, we are
stuck, right? I believe that was the message of Chris: we don't really
have procedures to take over a package, others than convincing the
maintainer.
A couple of times I've said "It looks like you could use some help. Would you
like me to co-maintain with you?" and have generally gotten a positive
response. If it's put in terms of "Looks like you're busy, I can help" and
not "You suck and should be fired so I can take over" people seem to be pretty
open to it.
Scott K