Re: RC bugs in packages maintained by this list
On Fri, Oct 19, 2001 at 09:26:23AM +0200, Christian Kurz wrote:
> On 18/10/01, Colin Watson wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 18, 2001 at 04:26:06PM +0200, Christian Kurz wrote:
> > > On 18/10/01, Colin Watson wrote:
> > > > Are you willing to maintain it,
>
> > > No, since I'm currently happy with the number of packages that I
> > > maintain. Also I'm tracking the OpenSSH development and so far it worked
> > > for me, so that I don't have a need to use ssh2.
>
> > > > or at least make it suitable for release?
>
> > > Is that the new way of threading people who speak up against a removal
> > > request for a package?
>
> > Show me the threat.
>
> Pardon, telling someone who speaks up against a removal for either
> maintainig the package or at "least make it suitable for release" is a
> kind of threading people to shup up.
Of course it's not! It's asking them if they would volunteer to do the
necessary work, since *somebody* has to do it, and if they're interested
in keeping the package around then they clearly know something about the
package, and therefore would obviously be a better person to do a QA
upload than somebody like me who knows next to nothing about it.
Since when was asking people with knowledge if they would volunteer to
do some particular task the same as telling them to shut up? (I hope it
never was and never will be.) I think you somehow completely
misunderstood my tone.
> > A package can be as worthy as it likes, but *somebody* has to want to
> > maintain the thing. QA maintenance, while certainly better than the
> > situation before the QA Group existed, is almost by definition not
> > acceptable for a package in the long term. If it is, then there's no
> > real reason to have normal maintainers at all.
>
> And that's why I once suggested that orphaned packages are maintained by
> a seperate group, who has enough man-power do this and have the QA group
> focus on QA issues.
Personally, I think orphaned packages *are* a QA issue.
But now that the majority of orphaned packages have their maintainer set
to packages@qa, we might be able to split the discussion of their
maintenance off to a separate list. (That was one of the points of
changing the address, wasn't it?) Anyone?
> > I didn't. I was talking about the case in which the openssh maintainer
> > reckons that there's a good reason to keep ssh2. In that case it needs a
> > maintainer.
>
> And then it's inappropriate or impossible for you to ask on debian-devel
> with a broad audience for someone to become the maintainer of the
> package, because it's needed?
Matt had already done that before I replied to your first post in this
thread. And it wasn't me who suggested removal in the first place. I
fully agree with making every effort to find a maintainer for any
package before removing it out of hand; that's why I asked you if you
would do it, since you spoke up on the subject and since I know you've
worked on ssh before.
(You seem to be ascribing all kinds of motives to me which simply aren't
there ...)
> > I look forward to seeing your proposed modifications to
> > http://qa.debian.org/documentation/qa.html/ch-rules.html which modify
> > the text that says that, after one month in which nobody has volunteered
>
> Sorry, but that's a proposal only which was never accepted as standard
> document outlining the actions of the QA Group. This document has
> therefor exactly 0 importance for any decision that is made here, until
> it's official accepted and the status changed.
What does "officially accepted" constitute? A vote among people active
in QA? I'd like to see some discussion so that we do have a set of
guidelines that we know we all roughly agree on.
My intent, though, was not to wave rules in your face (sorry if it
sounded that way), but to point out that it looked as if at least the
authors of that document would have agreed that it was time to think
about removing ssh2, assuming they stood behind their words.
One other thing; Adrian Bunk asked almost three months ago
(http://bugs.debian.org/99950) on this list if anyone objected to ssh2
being removed. You objected, so it was not removed then, but nobody
fixed the bugs either.
> > unstable distribution". I'm absolutely certain that a package which
> > hasn't had a maintainer upload since February 2000 and which has RC bugs
> > over a year old is well outside the limits where that document says
>
> According to the last mail to debian-devel-announce the package is
> exactly a 133 days orphaned, which is not nearly a year. So instead of
> complaining now here about the lousy maintenance of the package, you
> should instead complain about the one who either forgot to orphan it
> correctly or about the maintainer who didn't work carefully on his
> package till he really orphaned it.
Given who the previous maintainer was, I don't think it's really worth
my effort complaining, to be honest. ssh2 would probably be better
maintained if he were still a developer.
Anyway, I'm not trying to assign blame. There is a problem no matter
whose fault it was.
> And considering a package which hasn't been orphaned for a year, but
> hadn't worked on for more time by the maintainer as it seems, but has
> bugs, for removal, especially if it's a bit more useful then some
> orphaned games, is appropriate?
It's a last resort. As it stands, the package won't be released, so
there's limited point in keeping it alive in unstable. Since it's
non-free and wasn't in potato, I can understand why some people were
quicker to suggest removing it than I would have been: Martin Michlmayr
can probably tell you that I tend to be quite conservative about
suggesting that.
Matt has already done the right thing and asked on -devel. (We could
also do something like an announcement / plea for help on DWN if you
like.) We'll see what happens.
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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