Re: policy summary (new packages without man pages)
(I inadvertently sent this to -devel earlier, so apologies to anyone
already having read it there.)
In article <[🔎] 20000113233955.A1508@xs4all.nl> dark@xs4all.nl writes:
> What I'm really trying to say is that what we should expect from a
> maintainer is _commitment_.
As I've understood it, the only thing that has really been required in
the past of a maintainer (beyond any initial packaging) is to act as a
clearing house for bug reports and feature requests. If they have
time to investigate and fix all reported bugs themselves, keep in
communication with the upstream maintainer, &c., so much the better.
Many people working on Debian are students and have lots of time; some
of them (and God only knows how) have the time actively to maintain
many packages and still keep up with the mailing lists. Many, though,
have full-time jobs, copious other interests, a bevy of other free
software projects, and so on, and weeks may go by where they are
genuinely too busy with other things to contribute to Debian. If you
feel that's a lack of commitment and that they shouldn't be
maintaining packages, I disagree.
(a) Often highly competent people are very busy with many things, the
relative priorities of which only they can know. This does not
mean they're not committed to Debian, or that they're not a great
asset to the Project when they are able to contribute.
(b) We have mechanisms for other developers to rectify problems in
other maintainers' packages if the maintainer isn't active.
In the case in point, I think it's more important (in terms of benefit
to Debian) that we have a package at all than that we have the `perfect'
package; the work of a maintainer on a package is still useful work
even if that maintainer happens not to speak fluent nroff, or not to have
the time to write a good manual page. We should accept that work into
the distribution, where other developers (through the BTS and mailing
lists) can help fix any problems. This benefits Debian by encouraging
the developer, and benefits the world with the new package; I don't
see how rejecting that work benefits anyone.
(S)
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