Bug#548867: developers-reference: Improve section about developer duties
Package: developers-reference
Version: 3.4.3
Severity: normal
Following a discussion on debian-newmaint, I think it's important to
improve the section about the duties to clearly communicate to all package
maintainers (and not DD only) that the bare minimum is what I described
in the pledge below (it probably needs to reformulated in the third person
for integration in the devel-ref):
----
As a package maintainer, I will do my best to help the Debian project
release a stable version of our operating system. In particular, I will
work together with the release team and I will keep all packages
associated to my name free of release critical bugs. To this effect, if
I'm not registered as being busy or in vacation, I will start working on
my release critical bugs as soon as possible (in less than 1 week in
common cases). If I can't deal with them in a timely fashion, I will state
it clearly in the associated bug reports, tag them help and invite other
contributors either to provide a patch or to do a non-maintainer upload.
If I do not manage to handle release critical bugs in the above described
way, or if I almost never deal with any of my RC bugs by myself, I will:
• not refuse help and even propose co-maintainance to good contributors
• recognize my failure and actively try to find a new maintainer and/or
co-maintainers
• not complain if the quality assurance team decides to orphan the package
I recognize that my work is not limited to unstable. I will also work with
the stable release team and the security team to provide updated packages
for the stable and/or testing distribution when some issues deserve it.
I am aware of the limits of my skills and my available time and I will
avoid packaging software that I would not be able to maintain properly.
----
See discussion starting here:
http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2009/09/msg00018.html
And in particular the message of Christoph Berg (DAM):
http://lists.debian.org/debian-newmaint/2009/09/msg00032.html
Cheers,
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