Re: Non-DDs as official Debian package maintainers
Jonas Smedegaard <dr@jones.dk>
> [responding to the list, assuming the private posting was an error]
You took it off-list. Why do you assume about your own behaviour?
I feel your behaviour is very suspicious. Please ask before
publishing private correspondence in future.
> You support NMs taking the responsibility? How can they practically do
> that?
By maintaining the package according to best practice.
> What happens if they fail? How do we deal with that, compared to
> how we deal with DDs failing their responsibilities?
We deal with that better, because their sponsor ought to be watching
and deal with this sooner than QA acts on a failing DD.
> What I fail to understand is what skills you prove by fixing all in a
> package on your own.
You're missing a point: it's not that one works alone, it's that
one isn't relying on all submissions to the archive to be cleaned
up for you by the sponsor.
> > > I have no problem with that. It would simply mean that you -
> > > visibly - act as a proxy for outsiders. My point is that we need
> > > always an insider to take responsibility, and in order for our
> > > social credit reward system to work, the responsibility must be
> > > visible.
> >=20
> > Hiding non-DD maintainers will make it harder for the social
> > credit reward system of NM to work. It's not perfect already.
>
> Again: I talk about responsibility, not about credit. Let's try if we
> are talking about the same:
>
> Is our NM system based on letting those through that take a certain
> amount of responsibility?
It is weighted in their favour, as far as I can tell.
> I would rather that responsibility for Debian resources was given only
> to DDs.
Your preference. Not reality in so many ways.
> > > No. A sponsor is more than an uploader - a sponsor is _exactly_
> > > taking all responsibilities for the package on behalf of the non-DD
> > > that wants to do so herself but cannot because it requires being
> > > part of the community.
> >=20
> > If you changed the policy on this, I'd expect mass-orphaning of
> > sponsored packages.
>
> I would too - and that is what worries me: We have packages in Debian
> that noone within Debian takes responsibility for.
Rubbish. You said "all responsiblities" before, now only responsibility.
> I'd rather that irresponsible Debian developers orphaned such packages
> and they were either dropped from Debian officially (those outside of
> Debian are off course still free to maintain them outside of Debian) or
> adopted by Debian developers that actually care for them.
Sponsors are not irresponsible! They are just not the sole responsible
and their responsibility is different to maintainers or co-maintainers.
This is right and proper: without this practical route, the debian
distribution would be smaller and the NM process would probably involve
even more artificial tasks than it does.
In your world with only DDs as maintainers, what would be the
point of sponsorship?
--
MJR/slef
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