Re: appropriate Maintainer addresses for collectively-maintained packages

[Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>]

On Thu, 21 Aug 2025 at 18:46:01 +0200, Andrea Pappacoda wrote:
> On Thu Aug 21, 2025 at 6:01 PM CEST, Simon McVittie wrote:
> > if we see
> >
> > Package: example
> > Maintainer: Example maintainers <example@packages.debian.org>
> > Uploaders: Minnie Mouse <...>, Donald Duck <...>, Debian <debian-devel@...>
> >
> > then I think that makes it a lot more obvious that the two 
> > maintainers are saying, at least, "any Debian developer is welcome 
> > to join our team" (and perhaps also welcoming 0-day uploads from 
> > anyone).
>
> Yes, this is clearer. But also, what's the point of having the 
> Maintainer field then?

Backward-compatibility: our infrastructure (and Policy) demands that 
every package has exactly one Maintainer, so we can't remove it, unless 
someone changes all the infrastructure that has that assumption first.

One of the problems with being a decentralized project is that making a 
comprehensive list of components that rely on a particular assumption is 
not an easy thing to do.

    smcv