Re: NMUing "maintainer address bounces" bugs

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Willi Mann writes ("Re: NMUing "maintainer address bounces" bugs"):
> Am 2012-06-17 11:30, schrieb Alexander Reichle-Schmehl:
> >> * Non-maintainer upload. * debian/control: - Maintainer email
> >> address was invalid and bounced. Update it to use a valid
> >> address. Patch by Nathan Handler <nhandler@ubuntu.com> Closes:
> >> #675214.
...
> Note that I talked to Gürkan before I did those uploads. I should have
> noted that in the changelogs, but it did happen with his approval.

So just to be entirely clear, I hope everyone will agree that if you
have spoken to the maintainer of a package and they have said "yes
please NMU to fix my maintainer address" then that is absolutely fine.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with helping a maintainer who is
responsive to communications.  The only responsibility the maintainer
_has_ to discharge is to the responsibility to make decisions and, if
necessary, delegate.

> However, I'll follow your approach next time, particularly on packages
> where the wrong maintainer address is not the only sign that the
> package should really get some love by the maintainer.

Certainly if I found a badly-maintained package with an invalid
maintainer address I would consider writing to the maintainer offering
to help out as a co-maintainer, rather than simply offering to fix the
maintainer address.  Of course that would depend on whether I wanted
to be (co)-maintainer myself :-).

Ian.

[ Resent with Gurkan's name mangled because of this:
    550 5.6.0 improper use of 8-bit data in message header
  And yes I know that the RFC says that everyone must mangle
  everything into quoted-unprintable but that's absurd.  And
  why start enforcinng it now, decades later ? ]