On Tue, Feb 27, 2024 at 09:05:44AM +0100, Andreas Tille wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I became more deeply involved into DPT since 2022 as a consequence of
> the suggestion for transfering several Debian Med/Science packages to
> DPMT[1][2]. I happily followed this suggestion and moved >30 packages
> from the Blends teams to DPT. I was happy with this move since it makes
> sense.
>
> Recently we received lots of testing removal warnings in those Blends
> teams due to RC bugs caused by Cython 3.0 and Python3.12 migrations. So
> I did what I usually do in those teams: I dedicated quite some time in
> team wide bug hunting. That way I squashed about 50 bugs on packages
> where I was not in Uploaders. When doing so I usually run
> routine-update on the package which basically streamlines packaging to
> latest standards including calling Janitor tools which are so far
> accepted inside DPT.
>
> I probably should have reviewed the DPT policy on Maintainership[3] more
> carefully. In other teams, it's common for the Maintainer to be set to
> the team, so I assumed it was just an oversight when I made this
> change[4] when touching the package to fix RC bug #1058177. However, I
> I was pointed immediately about the fact that I was mistaken according
> to the current DPT policy. I apologize for this. However, the wording
> of the comment on my commit was discouraging, especially considering I
> was a volunteer who had fixed a critical bug. Because of this, I
> decided to focus my efforts on fixing other critical bugs for the
> moment. If the comment had started with a 'Thanks for fixing the
> critical bug, but...' I likely would have corrected my mistake quickly.
> The lack of respect from my teammate simply made me prioritize my time
> on other issues that are more visible to our users. I wonder whether I
> should propose another change to the policy about maintaining a kind and
> polite language inside the team - but that's a different thing.
>
> While I applied the patch for another RC bug (#1063443) after >2 weeks
> which triggered a RC bug in reportbug I remembered the "keep the
> maintainer" policy. But I kept on doing Janitor like changes since
> finally the package is maintained in a team where Janitor is accepted.
> When doing so I failed the phrase "please contact the Maintainer for the
> green light." I apoligize for this again. The response was another
> volunteer-demotivating private mail (thus no quote) which also was
> lacking the "Thanks for fixing"-phrase and degrading my changes as
> "frivolous".
>
> So far what happened (seen from my possibly biased perspective).
>
> Why do I like to change the policy?
>
> The current wording provides some means to stop volunteer team members
> helping out moving forward to speed up migrations and fix Debian wide
> dependencies. It hides team maintained packages from a common BTS
> view. When pointing my browser to
> https://bugs.debian.org/team+python@tracker.debian.org
> I currently see 1339 open bugs (calculated by [UDD1]). This hides
> another 309 [UDD2] bugs (>18% of team bugs) from our sight. To work
> around this flaw I used an UDD query to find relevant Python3.12 bugs.
>
> When I think twice about the wording
> Team in Uploaders is a weak statement of collaboration.[3]
> I personally consider it a statement of *no* collaboration (which fits
> the wording of the responses I've got).
>
> How can a team member for instance find another RC bug #1009424? Just
> from reading the bug report it is pretty easy to fix but does not
> feature any response in BTS. I came across this while looking into
> Cython 3.0 bugs. The same source package (basemap) that had the open
> Cython bug (#1056789, tagged patch since 2023-12-09) is featuring RC bug
> (#1009424) that stayed unattended for 22 months? We all know volunteers
> have limited time and I do not want to blame anybody in the team to not
> care promptly about RC bugs. But what else is the sense of a packaging
> team than stepping in situations for long standing RC bugs and RC bugs
> tagged patch?
>
> This kind of situation wouldn't occur in teams where collaboration is
> strong and communication is effective. My motivation to address these
> long-ignored critical bugs diminishes when the maintainer opts for
> "weak" cooperation and lacks respectful communication with potential
> helpers. I see no difference to simply do a NMU.
>
> I've checked the current situation who is actually using the DPT team as
> Uploaders[UDD3]. 66 of the 73 maintainers have less than 5 packages
> some of these "Maintainers" are other teams and lots of the persons
> listed as Maintainer are known to be MIA. This means the packages are
> de-facto not maintained which is most probably an unwanted effect of the
> current policy. I know other maintainers from other teams to be fine
> with stronger team understanding.
>
> Since I consider the current situation as demotivating for newcomers
> as well as long standing contributors I would like to suggest to drop
> this "weak statement of collaboration" option from policy. I've attached
> an according patch to the team policy[5]. I'm fine with creating a MR
> to be discussed rather in Salsa than this mailing list - whatever seems
> worthwhile to you.
+1 for this DPT policy change.
When I started to contribute I received these kind of comments that made
me think if I could really start contributing to Debian. As time went
by, I learned to read first who is the maintainer of the package before
read the bug reported, no matter if the package is (apparently) under the
DPT umbrella.
--
cheers,
Emmanuel Arias
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⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ eamanu@debian.org
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