Re: Christian Schwarz <schwarz@monet.m.isar.de>
On Tue, 3 Feb 1998, Ian Jackson wrote:
> Christian Schwarz:
> > Well, first of all current policy says ``Every package must have
> > exactly one maintainer at a time.'' (see section 2.3.2 The maintainer
> > of a package). So this is the case. Whether it `should' be the case
> > needs to be discussed.
>
> Well, it never used to be the case. It must have been added without
> consultation while noone was looking.
>
> It should be removed forthwith, both because it wasn't properly
> discussed and decided upon and because consensus here during the
> discussion about it was that this restriction should be removed.
>
> Usually packages should have one maintainer, but it should be the
> decision of the people involved what the arrangements actually are.
The sentence has been introduced in the Policy Manual 2.2.0.0 by me since
I considered it important and I thought it was already policy (just
undocumented).
I agree that we should discuss this sentence at least now, since a lot of
people don't see the reasons behind this. However, this sentence is way
too important to just remove it without providing a better formulation.
So I'll keep the sentence until this issue is resolved and I'll start
another thread on this topic ("maintainer policy") in a few minutes.
> So, I'm happy with everything you say except:
> > 2. In some cases a package will be maintained by a group of
> > people. This is an exception to our policy and requires special
> > approval. The "Maintainer:" field for such packages will be of the
> > form "Description-of-the-Maintainer-Group <email@host>" where the
> > "Description" uniquely defines a set of maintainers, and may be
> > listed on several packages which are all maintained by the same
> > developers.
>
> I'd like the sentence `This is an exception ... approval' deleted.
(I'll comment on this in the new thread in detail.)
> There is no point then stating:
> > The email address has to be some mail alias; all mails sent to that
> > address have to be forwarded to all maintainers in the group.
>
> You might as well leave that out. I'm sure the maintainers of a
> package can decide for themselves what they want to do with their
> email.
I strongly object! It's not up to the maintainers to decide whether they
want to get `maintainer emails' or not. If someone _is_ the maintainer of
a package, he/she automatically agreed to take care of the package (until
he/she hands the packages over to someone else--this can be at any time)
and also answer (at least, read) emails sent to him about the package.
(I'll also comment on this in the new thread in more detail.)
Since it looks like everyone agrees on how we'll implement the
"Maintainer:" -> person mapping (by comparing the `name' in front of the
email address to a field in the DB or to an override file) I think we can
start setting up the Developer DB this way. The outcome of the new
`maintainer policy' discussion should not matter WRT the DB. (Any
objections?)
Thanks,
Chris
-- Christian Schwarz
schwarz@monet.m.isar.de, schwarz@schwarz-online.com,
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