Re: How are packages associated with resigned debian developers handled?
Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> 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.
If someone resigns and decided to continue the maintenance of packages,
then they are in full right to do so. You don't need to be a DD to be a
package maintainer... Like mentioned in policy it's a DD's duty to
resign gracefully orphaning packages if they don't intend to maintain
them anymore... though that doesn't mean a resigned DD's packages should
be orphaned even if they decided to keep maintaining them...
In general resigning DDs that don't intend to maintain packages anymore,
have orphaned them already. In fact I have to see the first counter
example...
If you do have concerns about particular maintainers, you should
preferably contact the MIA Team.
Cheers
Luk
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