Re: removal instead of orphaning?

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Holger Levsen writes ("Re: removal instead of orphaning?"):
> Maaaaaybe a solution would be a third kind of maintainer/uploader, so
> people could indicate that they are happy to do house-cleaning work on
> this package, even though they are not apt to maintain it properly.
> 
> Maintainers: debian-qa@lists.debian.org
> House-cleaners: foo@example.org

I think it might be worth a facility for documenting this kind of
thing, indeed.

I'm not sure that a source package control file field is the right
place for this information, though.  The set of housekeepers might
change more quickly than the package is updated, and one wouldn't want
to need to do an upload just because of a housekeepers change.

Personally if I care about a package enough to want fix it if
something really bad were to happen to it, but not enough to actually
become its maintainer when it's orphaned, I subscribe to the package
in the PTS.

Perhaps one way of documenting this information would be to have an
optional `public subscription' flag in the PTS.  Public subscribers to
the package would be listed on a web page and maybe in some API or
deb822 file somewhere or something ?

Ian.