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

[Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>]

Le Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 10:08:23AM -0700, Russ Allbery a écrit :
> 
> Charles and Steve, you're the two who objected to or were avoiding the
> "should" language.  Does this persuade you?

Still not completely: a sentence like “The maintainer then becomes <tt>Debian
QA Group” gives a feeling of automation that does not match reality: somebody
has to do the work, and we do not have bots to replace humans for this task.

How about moving in the footnote the parts about who should do what, and keeping
in the main text only the normative part:

	<p>
	  Packages are called “orphaned” when there is no volunteer to be
	  their maintainer<footnote> 
	    The detailed procedure for orphaning gracefully a package can
	    be found in the Debian Developer's Reference, see <ref id="related">.
	  </footnote>. Orphaned packages are considered maintained by
	  the Debian project as a whole until someone else volunteers to
	  take over maintenance. The <tt>Maintainer</tt> field of orphanded
	  packages should be <tt>Debian QA Group &lt;packages@qa.debian.org&gt;</tt>.
	</p>

(The footnote can be expanded to emphasis that it is the role of the maintainer who
gives up to do the orphanning).

In the above paragraph, ‘should’ can be taken with its normalised meaning.

This said, if I am not convincing, I do not want to block the discussion any longer, so
please go ahead.

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles