Bug#453313: Patch with best practices for sponsorship

[Charles Plessy <plessy@debian.org>]

Le Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 02:15:39PM +0100, Raphael Hertzog a écrit :
> 
> please find attached a proposed patch for this bug. Any review/ack welcome.

Dear Raphaël,

here are a couple of comments :

> <para>
> Any Debian Developer can sponsor packages. Debian Maintainers can't. 
> </para>

Only Debian Developers with upload rights can. I propose to either write this
explicitely, or remove the word “Any”.


> <para>The maintainer prepares a source package (.dsc) and puts it online somewhere (like on mentors.debian.net).</para>

I wish that we would encourage more the developers to use version control
systems. How about:

  The maintainer prepares a source package and uploads it somewhere (like on
  mentors.debian.net) or provides a link to a revision in a publicly available
  version control system (like on alioth.debian.net).


> <para>The sponsor downloads the source package.</para>

  The sponsor downloads or checkouts the source package.


> Don't ever sponsor a new package without reviewing it. The review
> of new packages done by ftpmasters mainly ensures that the software
> is really free, it does not verify the package's quality. This is your task.

I wonder if this gives the impression that it is the FTP teams's job to do the
full review of the package. In my understanding, its job is to make sure that
the review has been done maintainer, which is not exactly the same, even if it
implies re-doing the check from scratch :) How about :

  Don't ever sponsor a new package without reviewing it. It is your task
  to make sure that the package is realy free and of high quality. Note that
  while the FTP team will check in detail your review of the package's
  copyright and license, only the most severe quality issues will cause the
  package to be rejected (See http://ftp-master.debian.org/REJECT-FAQ.html).


> <para>Run licensecheck (part of <xref linkend="devscripts"/>) and verify that
> <filename>debian/copyright</filename> seems correct and complete. Look for
> license problems (like files with “All rights reserved”
> headers, or with a non-DFSG compliant license).</para>

Licensecheck has many false negatives. How adding:

  Double-check with grep -ri that nothing was forgotten with keywords like
  copyright, author or license.


If you like those changes, I can prepare them as a proper patch.

Have a nice day,

-- 
Charles Plessy
Tsurumi, Kanagawa, Japan