Re: tb's questions for the candidates

[Martin Michlmayr <tbm@cyrius.com>]

* Anthony Towns <aj@azure.humbug.org.au> [2004-03-13 14:46]:
> > retired can simply get added again, and that others have to do
> > more checks.  
> 
> So, is it possible for them to fail these checks? If one of them is:
> 
> "Last time you were in Debian, you dropped out of contact for six
> months, your packages got NMUed and orphaned, and your account got
> disabled after you didn't reply to a maintainer ping. Are you going
> to do better this time?"
> 
> "Probably not."

Well, I don't think asking a question like this makes sense anyway.
It's much better to look at the actual behaviour.  While technical or
philosophical questions can easily be asking with a rigid set of
questions, this does not apply to the question whether someone has
enough time and motivation.  So I think the check would be in a way
where the AM looks at the behaviour and can from this draw conclusions
and suggests, such as suggest that the maintainer should get
co-maintainers.

In general, I don't think that orphaning the packages of an inactive
maintainer is the best solution.  Unfortunately, it's the only
solution we have at the moment, but we certainly have to find better
ways.  One better solution is to have co-maintainers.  Another
solution is to have a group of QA people who are willing to help busy
maintainers for a few months.  At the moment, we unfortunately cannot
tell a busy maintainer, "it's okay, we'll take care of your packages
while you're busy".  However, I hope to help building a QA team which
will provide this service.  This is much more useful then orphaning a
package, and then removing it a few months later because nobody picked
it up (which happens more than you might think).  [ Also, removing
packages is not the best solution, as mentioned previously, because
the user's are no longer supported. ]

-- 
Martin Michlmayr
tbm@cyrius.com