Re: negative vote for maintainer Michael Gilbert
Sergiusz Pawlowicz <sergiusz@pawlowicz.name> writes:
> Patrick Matthäi <pmatthaei@debian.org> wrote:
>> So if you would have a fractured leg and can't work for a few months
>> you would resign your job? It is simple like that.
> Not me, the job would resign itself - it is pretty common in the UK if
> you are not capable to fulfill your duties, you are loosing your job.
My personal ethical belief is that employment law that would allow
someone's position to be terminated due to a temporary medical illness is
actively evil and should be fought and overturned. I feel the same way
about policies within the Debian project, and since we're all volunteers,
that would extend to temporary inability to work on a package for other
reasons, such as being too busy. (I am actually quite dubious that UK
employment law would allow any such thing, as that would make it deficient
compared to US employment law, and the US generally offers less protection
for workers than the UK. I suspect you're talking about permanent
disability, which is a different matter.)
The key in both cases is, of course, "temporary." If you're permanently
unable to do the job, then that's another matter, and in Debian you should
put your package up for adoption. The MIA process handles (slowly, and
not always well) the case in Debian where someone is unable to maintain a
package for longer than a temporary period but doesn't put it up for
adoption.
But temporary inability for whatever reason is something that employers,
and Debian, simply have to cope with without requiring that people leave
their position. Employers have to be able to fill for people who are out
on, say, maternity leave (which can take longer than three months), and
Debian has to be able to fill for people who are temporarily busy. We
have many robust mechanisms for doing so, such as co-maintainership and
NMUs.
Package maintainers do indeed have a duty to not block such mechanisms
from being used while they're not available, but I see no evidence that
Michael is doing any such thing.
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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