Mechanism for removing developers

[John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>]

Hello,

Recently there have been several things occuring that have prompted me to
start asking about this:

 * Despite having Important, Critical, or Grave bugs filed against their
   packages in frozen, some developers still ignore them.  They could
   at least say "I can't fix this; can somebody else help?"

 * I have recently encountered a developer that has completely ignored
   some bugs for over 700 days and numerous bugs for over 200.  His packages
   are languishing, and have required NMUs simply because they're so old
   that they mess things up with other software.  E-mails get no reply, bug
   reports get no reply, etc.

I view both of these as developers failing to live up to the responsibility
that they accepted when they accepted maintainorship of packages.  The
second example is particularly bad; the developer could at least reply to
the person submitting a bug.

In light if this, I ask if we have some mechanism for either removing a
developer from Debian if they have serious lack of responsibility issues, or
at least of declaring their packages orphaned and up for adoption.  If not,
I would like to ask that we consider drafting a policy for such a situation.

I am not proposing throwing people out for having bugs in their packages, or
even for having lots of them.  Rather, what I am proposing is a way to
prevent people that ignore their responsibility from becoming a hindrance to
the quality and freshness of Debian.

Thanks,
John