Re: Question to all candidates: DPL's role in important package maintenance
On Sat, Mar 27, 2010 at 8:27 PM, Kumar Appaiah
<a.kumar@alumni.iitm.ac.in> wrote:
> My question to you is, do you envision a role for the DPL in fixing
> such inadequate maintenance of important packages, or are you of the
> opinion that is it up to the affected Debian "community" to stop
> whining and step up with some action themselves?
I think my view is somewhat in the middle. I do not think that the
DPL should be constantly checking on every maintainer or team in order
to see if their job is being done correctly, or meddle with people
that are generally doing their job right.
However, when such an issue is brought to the DPL attention, I believe
that it's part of the DPL role to help in finding the solution that's
best for Debian, acting as a sort of mediator.
In the particular case of the Python packages that was linked, I agree
that the correct place to bring the issue to was the tech ctte, but
keeping the DPL involved was also a good idea, because the DPL can
help by organizing meetings and the like.
Regarding your second question, posted to zack:
> The method adopted for
> resolution of this conflict has, for better or for worse, happened
> "behind-the-scenes". Now, some in the project feel that this is the
> best way to avoid a conflagration of sorts, but others feel that this
> "back channel" approach does not augur well for a project which
> strives to adopt open procedures. Would you, as DPL, facilitate such
> negotiations in the open (for instance, on a publicly viewable mailing
> list), or under wraps?
I've been thinking about this myself, for a while. If I'm elected,
I'd like to have a most viewable point of contact that goes through RT
or a similar interface, so that requests are easy to track and follow.
I'm not sure if the current installation of RT for Debian would be
well suited for this purpose, but in case it isn't, it's probably easy
to find one solution that is well suited
I'm also not sure if redirecting leader@ to that system would be
alright, because it might break an expectation of privacy from certain
people. But I'd definitely like to have an "open by default" policy,
and have "closed" conversations only when the subject of the
conversation requires it.
--
Besos,
Marga
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