Maintainer information in source packages (was: Re: Returning to the requirement that Uploaders: contain humans)

[Ansgar Burchardt <ansgar@debian.org>]

Hi,

as a more radical change one could also ask the question where to
maintain the maintainer information.  Currently we handle this in the
source package via the Maintainer and Uploaders field, and via team
memberships.

This has several limitations: for teams, Uploaders will often be
useless (you don't want to list all team members in every team-
maintained package).  The Maintainer field only really applies to
Debian, in derivatives someone else should be contacted.  In stable
releases, the field can often be outdated (it records who maintained
the package some time ago, not who currently maintains it).

So I have been wondering several times whether we should move the
maintainer information elsewhere.  For example, tracker.d.o could be
extended to record maintainer information.  It could also understand
the concept of "teams" listing team members and whom to send mails
about individual packages.

For legacy purposes, the Maintainer field would then list ${source}@tra
cker.d.o and the Uploaders field could be removed.

This would also address the fact that various bits of our
infrastructure don't know about Uploaders (like bugs.d.o only
contacting the Maintainer).

Ansgar