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Bug#459868: debian-policy: Definition of Maintainer: when using a mailing list



Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> writes:
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 08:02:43AM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
>> On Mon, 12 Jul 2010, Russ Allbery wrote:

>>> +	  If the maintainer of a package no longer has time or desire to
>>> +	  maintain a package, it will be orphaned according to the
>>> +	  procedure described in the Debian Developer's Reference
>>> +	  (see <ref id="related">).  The maintainer then

>> "It will" makes it sound like that the former maintainer has nothing to
>> do. "It should" would be more appropriate IMO.

> But "should" is a magic, normative verb in policy, so I avoided using it
> here even though it's the natural choice... :)

Hm, but actually, isn't the magic of "should" appropriate here?  If a
package is unmaintained but not orphaned, that *is* a bug, which is what
"should" means.  Admittedly, Policy normally only governs the contents of
packages and not procedural issues in Debian like orphaning, but this sort
of straddles the boundary.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>



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