Re: Bug#981113: ITP: root -- open-source data analysis framework

[Ole Streicher <olebole@debian.org>]

Hi Mattia,

Mattia Rizzolo <mattia@debian.org> writes:
> So history of this package shows that the interest wanes after ~2 years,
> which meakes me wonder wether this is only driven by some external
> factor, like some phd-driven work or similar.
>
> I'm *not* in favor of adding such big piece of software to the archive,
> if it's  interest is something that is assured to disappear in a couple
> of years.  So please make sure of your motivation and state it.

I think this would be rather a no-go for most packages: Probably not
many people can make sure that they will still work on the topic in two
years. Especially in Science, people have PhD positions or Postdocs or
similar positions with an 1-3 year time scale, and always the danger to
be kicked out. I am sitting on the same chair here: I just can't say
whether I will be available in two years (although I hope and plan so).

The best solution here would IMO not be to have only a single person
sticked to large packages, but to have them co-maintained (additionally
to science-team-maintained). This is not a need for the initial
releases, but part of the maintenance should clearly be the search for
additional maintainers (and to make/keep the package so easy to maintain
that the threshold stepping in is not too high).

So, I would rather encourage Stephan to create the package, but also to
collaborate within Debian-Science as much as possible (to make the
package easily maintainable), and to start searching for co-maintainers.

Best regards

Ole