Re: Self-assessment of the quality of the maintenance work
On Sat, 20 Dec 2008, Sune Vuorela wrote:
> On 2008-12-20, Raphael Hertzog <hertzog@debian.org> wrote:
> > maintainer receives a mail with a link to a web form where he'll have a
> > list of all the packages that he maintains/co-maintains and for each
> > package he has to answer several questions that explain his relationship
> > with the package (the answer are preseeded with the values he selected
> > the previous time so that he can quickly skim over it if nothing has
> > changed):
> > - what kind of maintainer he is
> > - active (responding quickly, forwarding bugs, ???)
> > - passive (responds only to major problems)
> > - backup (not doing anything unless solicited)
> > - if the package needs an active maintainer or not (most perl modules are
> > well maintained with a single "passive" maintainer)
> > - if the package needs help from another volunteer
> >
> > We could integrate various heuristics/data in the process to help the
> > maintainer recognize that he's (not) keeping up and that he needs help
> > or maybe that he's no more "active" but only "passive".
> >
> > If the maintainer doesn't respond, he automatically enters the MIA
> > process and the package is quickly marked as needing help/attention
> > from someone else.
>
> I'd rather spend my time on fixing my packages than on filling web forms
> with bureaucratic bullshit.
Thanks for your constructive comments… and the nice vocabulary.
It might take some time the first time that you submit but it's good to
step back a few seconds to think about the maintenance status of the
packages that you maintain (do I need help? do I maintain it actively or
would I let the package go if someone more involved in the upstream
project showed up?). Later on the bureaucratic work takes a couple
of seconds, not much more than the time you spent to write you nice reply.
Cheers,
--
Raphaël Hertzog
Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch :
http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/
Reply to: