Re: The Debian Maintainers GR
Hi aj,
Some parts feel very obvious to me. Am I missing something?
On Thu, 2007-08-02 at 14:38 +1000, Anthony Towns wrote:
> At present, how do you find packages that have been packaged by non-DDs
> and uploaded with the minimal checks by a DD in order to review them,
> or just get a sense of how common it is?
The non-DD packager is identified by the "Maintainer:" field, and the
sponsors is identified by the signature.
>
> With DMs, you check for uploads signed by a key in the DM keyring.
With sponsors you can check for uploads signed by a key in the Debian
Developers keyring.
>
> At present, if you find someone doing a poor job as a non-DD maintainer
> or as a sponsor, and they reject suggestions on how to do better, what
> recourse do you have?
Suspending the upload right of the sponsor until the sponsor agrees to
do better.
>
> With DMs, if you can get other DDs to agree with your analysis, you can
> pass it on to the DM keyring maintainers and have the non-DD maintainer's
> ability to upload removed, or provide evidence that stricter procedures
> for advocating DMs is necessary.
Without DMs, if you can get other DDs to agree with your analysis, you
can pass it on to the DPL and have the sponsor's ability to upload
suspended, or provide evidence that stricter procedures for sponsoring
is necessary.
>
> At the moment, it's not possible to review if sponsors and non-DD
> maintainers are doing a good or a bad job on average, and its at best
> difficult even in specific cases. With the DM process as proposed, that
> becomes much easier
Anyone interested can make an overview of non-DD packagers and their
maintainers by scanning the "Maintainer:" fields and the package
signatures.
> : there's a public record of who's advocating who
There's currently a public record of who's sponsoring who.
> and why,
As far as I know, the "why" part is currently not covered with
sponsoring.
> there's a chain of trust to the actual uploads,
Introducing DM's uploading directly to unstable makes "the chain of
trust to the actual uploads" less safe.
> and there's
> the ability for negative reviews to actually result in some action.
No, DM's mistakes will already be in unstable and testing before
negative reviews by DD's are possible. With sponsoring the negative
reviews by DD's happen before uploading to unstable.
>
> As far as doing the same thing under NM is concerned, consider how
> you would review if the DAMs, FD or AMs are doing a good or a bad job,
> and what recourse you actually have if you think they're not.
No idea about that. But the GR is not really about their work, is it.
I think that the way forward is to make existing procedures more
efficient, and not add more procedures.
Also, I think that a quick win could be to stop using the term "non-DD",
and instead calling all contributors "Debian Contributor" (DC). That
could be made visible and official. Such a DC can be a translator, a
packager, a bug fixer submitting patches to the bts, a release
manager :), a programmer writing code in svn or cvs, a bug triager just
tagging bugs and pinging people, ... The information on the Debian
website about "joining Debian" could be modified to focus on becoming a
contributor instead of on becoming a DD via the NM queue. I think that
the NM queue will become shorter and faster. I'm sure that most DC's
will feel happy with the recognition of being an official DC, and don't
mind (or mind less) working via an active sponsor. The term "non-DD"
sounds negative, almost insulting. The term "Debian Contributor" is at
least honorable, and something to brag about. :)
Regards,
Bart Martens
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