How are packages associated with resigned debian developers handled?
More than a year ago, Matthew Garrett resigned from Debian. His
decision is explained in
<URL:http://mjg59.livejournal.com/66647.html>. He still is listed as
the maintainer of several packages on
<URL:http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=mjg59@srcf.ucam.org>,
and seem to kind of maintain at least libpam-foreground (got one
upload since his resignation, while hotkey-setup and nstx and the
others have received no uploads from him since he resigned. This make
me suspect he is no longer maintaining the packages. I've asked him a
few days ago if it is OK for me to take over maintenence of
hotkey-setup with no reply that I am aware of, and had a similar
situation this summer with libpam-foreground which eventually lead up
to the new upload of libpam-foreground.
This is my context, but my question is generic. How are packages
maintained by developers that resign handled, and how should they be
handled. Personally, I believe those packages should be orphaned
right away, to make it easier for others to take over. As it is now,
one need to ask a resigned developer if it is OK to take over the
package, and the response time might be slow. I believe there is a
hole in the official Debian procedures for handling resigned
developers that do not put up all their packages for adoption, and
suggest we come up with a procedure to handle it.
CC to Matthew, to make him aware that I raise my concert on debian-qa.
Happy hacking,
--
Petter Reinholdtsen
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