Re: Upstream maintainers are sleeping (Was: Reviving Debian QA
On Tue, Mar 30, 1999 at 09:40:26AM +0200, Stephane Bortzmeyer wrote:
> On Tuesday 30 March 1999, at 0 h 24, the keyboard of Martin Schulze
> <joey@finlandia.Infodrom.North.DE> wrote:
> > Quite easy. Many upstream maintainers aren't aware that some Debian
> > people picked up their package and worked on them.
> As a rule, I *always* ask for permission of upstream authors. Even when the
> package is GPL and I don't really need the permission. That way, I'm sure the
> author actually read my message and processed it. If it does not reply, I
> That way, they are informed there is a Debian package. I tell them about
> source packages and how to get the diff, too. It is not a legal obligation,
> but I think it is simply polite. And it's more efficient: it increases the
> probability that they inform me of new releases, that they direct to me Linux
> questions, etc.
It's a good thing to tell the upstream author about the Debian package,
but that's no reason not to tell them about changes you've made. It
shouldn't be their job to go to the archive, check to see if you've made
a new package, get it and go through the diff to see if you've done
anything they might want to use.
Note that this is more about changes that could be useful upstream, such
as glibc2.1 fixes, rather than purely Debian changes.
--
Mark Brown mailto:broonie@tardis.ed.ac.uk (Trying to avoid grumpiness)
http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/~broonie/
EUFS http://www.eusa.ed.ac.uk/societies/filmsoc/
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