Re: Time to push qt-x11 and friends into testing?

[Adrian Bunk <bunk@fs.tum.de>]

On Thu, Nov 13, 2003 at 07:37:14PM -0500, Nathanael Nerode wrote:
> >>Wouldn't it be more effective if you would try to fix these packages
> 
> >>instead of proposing to remove them?
> 
> No, it wouldn't.
> 
> (1) I couldn't care less about these packages.  I'm not competent to fix 
> them and
> I don't really want to.
> 
> (2) nurbs++ has been failing to build on HPPA since July, while 
> innovation3d has
> been failing to build on arm since July.  If the mainttainer doesn't know 
> about
> the problem, he's derelict.  If he does know and doesn't care, his packages 

If noone reports it, it's quite possible a maintainer misses a build 
problem in one of his packages on one architecture.

pinging the maintainer if he misses such a problem is quite easy and 
often helpful.

> should
> be removed from testing.  If he does care, why is there zero evidence?
>...

If a maintainer is MIA, his packages should be orphaned and he should be 
kicked out of Debian as soon as possible.


But a "If he does know and doesn't care, his packages should be removed
from testing." will IMHO do _much_ harm to Debian:

testing should one day become Debian 3.1 .

For a user, it doesn't matter why a package isn't in Debian stable.
E.g. I've heard questions why gnuchess isn't in Debian 3.0 .

Debian 3.0 contains 7 CDs with binaries and Debian 3.1 might contain 10
or more CDs. How do you explain to a user why there are 10 CDs but this
popular package is not included and that popular package he needs is not
included?

Saying "The maintainer didn't care enaugh about the package you need."
only sounds like a good reason to switch to RedHat...  :-(


The Debian Social Contract says "Our Priorities are Our Users and Free 
Software", if your users are a priority, dropping packages from a 
release shouldn't occur when it isn't badly needed.


> --Nathanael

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed