Bug#697565: lintian: dsc field original-maintainer is unknown to lintian
Nick Black <nick.black@sprezzatech.com> writes:
> It seems that, even in the case of Debian, this field might be correctly
> used when e.g. importing packages that originated in SprezzOS, Ubuntu,
> or any other derivative that correctly sets the Maintainer field on new
> packages. Thus, this field ought be globally allowed.
I don't believe there's any history of using this header in Debian, so I
disagree with this point. The semantics of the field do not fit the way
that Debian packages are maintained; Debian never systematically imports
packages from another source, and the package maintainer in Debian is
wholly responsible for the contents of the package. A Debian package may
be a derivative work of packaging done elsewhere, but that's not the same
thing as the semantics of the field in Ubuntu (who invented the field and
which I assume other derivatives are using for inspiration).
There are 10 instances of this header in Debian unstable right now, of
which eight are by the same maintainer (Chris Grzegorczyk
<grze@eucalyptus.com>) who appears to be an unusual outlier (and seven of
those all list the same person as Original-Maintainer). Of the other two
instances, one (mffm-fftw) is completely nonsensical (it lists the Debian
QA Group as the Original-Maintainer). The last is fatresize, which lists
Philippe Coval in both Uploaders and Original-Maintainer, which seems a
little strange.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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