Bug#203046: RFA: doc-linux -- Linux HOWTOs and FAQs

[Colin Watson <cjwatson@debian.org>]

Package: wnpp
Severity: normal

Hi folks,

I've been maintaining doc-linux for nearly two years now. While I'm
satisfied that it's in a much better state than when I took it on,
during that time it's consumed pretty much a solid day or two of effort
every month, and I'm now getting busy enough that retrieving that day or
two for other projects would be very welcome. Furthermore, the whole
non-free split and GFDL issues have been a source of angst for quite a
while, and I haven't really had the time required to chase up document
authors about the huge pile of forwarded bugs.

I'm therefore looking for a new primary maintainer. I originally took
the package on (some might say hijacked ...) because it was Priority:
standard, unmaintained, and broken, so I am *not* orphaning it; I'd like
to know that the new primary maintainer has the commitment required to
make sure it doesn't end up that way again, and in fact I'd rather like
to stay on as a backup or co-maintainer for a while. I have a Subversion
repository for the last few months' worth of packaging which should be
moved somewhere more public and used.

Anyone taking this on should be willing to deal with legal issues in a
way that both satisfies debian-legal and doesn't infuriate members of
the Linux Documentation Project, which is not always an easy task. You
should also have the energy to ping authors about forwarded bugs, and
ideally eventually let the LDP know when some of them don't respond and
new maintainers for those documents need to be found. The ability to
make the build system less mad would probably be good too. :)

David Harris has expressed an interest in this job, and I've talked to
him about it on IRC, so if he still wants it he's welcome. If anyone
else is interested, then contact me: a small team would be a good idea
anyway.

Cheers,

-- 
Colin Watson                                  [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]