Bug#681833: developers-reference: please document a package salvaging process

[Michael Gilbert <mgilbert@debian.org>]

On Mon, Jul 16, 2012 at 9:37 PM, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Michael Gilbert writes:
>
>> Interesting condition.  According to Developers Reference 5.9.4,
>> orphaning is a process that is only supposed to be initiated by the
>> existing maintainer.
>
> Orphaning is also done by the QA team, and it's frequently been done by
> other people after discussion in debian-devel provided that the same sorts
> of checks have been done.  (Membership in the QA team is not well-defined,
> so to some extent that's the same thing.)

Thanks for the correction.  3.1.3 does grant that power to the QA
team, which is of course effectively all DDs.

Although once salvaging is in place, and there is a self-directed way
to adopt packages, the need to do orphaning beforehand won't be
necessary.  So then orphaning as a maintainer-only right just makes
more sense.

Just to give you an idea of what I'm thinking long-term: salvaging
will one day obsolete MIA.  If maintainership changes become
self-directed, then ultimately there is no longer a need for a MIA
team to pester people (which no one wants to do anyway).  MIA'ness
will be clear once new maintainers have taken over all of the old
maintainer's packages and removed his name.  That would then give MIA
the go-ahead to say hey, all of your packages have been salvaged,
we'll be closing your account soon if no action is taken.

Best wishes,
Mike