Re: Proposal for collaborative maintenance of packages
skaller <skaller@users.sourceforge.net> writes:
> I might be willing to package some of these things myself. What puts me
> off is not doing the packaging work -- its having to hassle about
> getting a DD to upload it. And then hassle them every time there is an
> upgrade. I don't really like hassling people.
Speaking as someone who has done some sponsoring and plans on doing more,
I really do not consider it a hassle and don't want other people to think
of it as hassling me. Right now, there are a lot of people without
sponsors and therefore a lot of random packages that go to debian-mentors
in search of one. Checking those packages can be a bit slow and there
aren't many people who are just accepting any random package and trying to
do the work of sponsoring it. However, once one has set up a relationship
with a particular person and a particular package or set of packages, it's
really not that much work and there are various ways to make it easier.
I'd love to see more of that work automated (checking upstream source
tarballs, for instance, and further improving lintian to catch more
stuff), but the sponsoring process does work. When I was in NM, I had the
assistance of an *excellent* sponsor in Ben Pfaff, who really made
contributing to Debian about as easy as possible without being a DD. I
really think that this process can work well, even for people who never
want to be full DDs, and certainly for people going through NM.
(It's particularly satisfying to sponsor adoptions of orphaned packages by
people who are really interested in them. Adding more software to Debian
is nice, but improving the software already in Debian is even better.)
--
Russ Allbery (rra@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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