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Re: Question to Stefano, Steve and Luk about the organisation into packaging teams.



On Mon, Mar 23, 2009 at 05:48:08PM +0100, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
> [ ACK on the comment that proposals like this one deserve a wider
>   audience than -vote and the candidates. Given you are asking, here
>   is my answer, which does not inhibit re-raising the issue elsewhere
>   of course (hint hint :-)) ]

As already stated elsewhere I'm surely opening that topic somewhere
with a broader audience, but its a good topic for me to see which
opinions the DPL candidates act for.

> On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 01:43:16PM +0100, Patrick Schoenfeld wrote:
> > Some of these packages are very well maintained and others.. well,
> > bug numbers sometimes speak for themselves. For these packages we have
> > that cool text on the PTS pages: "The package is of priority standard
> > or higher, you should really find some co-maintainers." which brought
> > me on this at all. What I thought about when I read that is: "HaHaHa,
> > we are kidding on us own, because we recommend something to us, what
> > should actually be the default (for this type of packages).
> 
> I don't get what you mean here: it should be the default in which
> sense? in the ideal world? agreed. Beside that, it is not written
> anywhere that it should be the case. The warning is there because (as
> I've mentioned elsewhere in this thread) the PTS has been used in the
> past to push for QA practices which were considered good by the PTS
> maintainers. That warning was implemented (IIRC, I haven't checked the
> svn logs) by Raphael and has stayed there because the other people who
> maintainer the PTS agrees with its good intention.

Stefano, actually I agree with its good intention. What I actually
think is that we are kidding ourselves, because we already see whats
needed, but don't go an active way of solving something which might be
an issue. Instead we are acting only passive, with this note, with the
best hope that someone will come and fix the problem.

> > What do you think about such a proposal?
> 
> It would make perfectly sense, but I fail to see its specificity. I
> think that such important packages should be team maintained, even
> only for backup reasons [1].  Is it that relevant for your proposal
> that the team is a single one as opposed to multiple one? In practice,
> I imagine that the overlap between maintenance team will grow over
> time, so you can also see it as a gradual path towards your proposal.

No, actually its ok if we have more then one team. Some of these
packages are already team-maintained and possibly good. What I aimed at
was a team that backups existing teams and pitches in where team-power
is missing. A team that is always responsible for packages, which are
otherwise only in the responsibility of single maintainers. Such a team
would always be empowered to make uploads for these packages,
without needing to escalate single issues to the CTTE or
comply with waiting periods for NMUs.
 
> Finally, let me observe that nothing in our current rules inhibit that
> from happening: it would be enough to get the current maintainer
> around an (IRC-)table, and decide to start over by asking for people
> interested to join the forthcoming teams.

Yes, asking the maintainer weither its okay, if a core-team can assist
him with his duties, would be the normal way that should always be
followed (even with my proposal). But it goes somewhat farer in that it
it would make the members of that core team delagates with a given
package set as their responsibility.

It still needs volunteers to act in this team, but I think that a team
which one can be part of makes volunteer positions actually more
interesting as doing work, reporting it in the BTS and hoping some
overloaded person will ever look into and considering it.

Regards,
Patrick

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