Re: What to do about negligent maintainers?
Tollef Fog Heen wrote:
> I am not sure what we should do with problems like this. Not doing
> anything sends a signal that DDs are held to a different standard than
> DMs and NMs. I don't think that is a signal we should send.
Agreed. At least in terms of packaging expectations, DDs' should be
equal to DMs'.
> Ideally, we should be able to ask the maintainer to scale back and they
> do so. However, what should we do if they either don't respond or
> disagree? The TC can already rule over maintainership so perhaps that
> is enough and we don't need any more procedures or rules to handle those
> cases?
What about adding some informal rule like this to dev-ref (or wherever):
after n unacknowledged NMUs the package may be taken over without it
being considered a "hostile takeover", more like "updating to reflect
the de-facto maintainer".
The new maintainer would in turn be free to RFA the package, request
removal, team-maintain it or whatever.
This would have the benefit of requiring some work from complainers and
making it look less like idle finger-pointing, possibly reducing the
social friction that happens anytime someone complains about someone
else's work, regardless of the complaint's merits.
Asking for TC intervention is also an option, but it's IMHO a bit
extreme. Though I still find it better than the other proposed
alternatives (DAM intervention, GR, whatever).
Cheers
--
Leo "costela" Antunes
[insert a witty retort here]
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