On Wed, 14 Sep 2005, Guanglei Xiong wrote:
BTW, I still think packaging and publishing for Debian is free and accessible for every human being. So does Debian itself. There should be no restriction that someone has already packaged something, and some others must not package and publish it. I am not aware whether is appropriate in Debian. Some people are free to correct me.
We have the concept that a maintainer is responsible for a certain piece
of software. Debian policy says that if somebody issues an ITP he claims
to become the maintainer of this software. The Debian-QA team tries to
ensure that an ITP is not blocking packaging for years if there is no
further development. But if Gavin insists in wanting to package this it
would be against Debian rules to take this over. I would not sponsor
the package with a "Closes: <ITP-bug-number>" and there should be only
one. But we try to establish the concept of group maintainance because
Free Software is about working together instead of competing with each
other (well, in principle - there is also some useful competition but not
in maintaining the same software for Debian). So try to arange some
useful cooperation for this package to move ot as quick as possible to
the Debian mirror.
Kind regards
Andreas.
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