Re: Dear Fesco: Orphan package process needs work

[Josh Boyer <jwboyer jdub homelinux org>]

On Wed, 2006-10-04 at 11:12 -0400, Christopher Aillon wrote:

> The most important things in that whole sequence are the last two. 
> Clearly, dropping the package impacted Fedora users negatively.  And 
> there was community interest in maintaining the package, so it's 
> plausible that had it been given a fair process, it wouldn't have been 
> dropped.

Note that this is a result of the mass rebuild effort really.  Not the
orphan process.

> 
> I believe the process for orphaning packages needs to address those.  I 
> propose this:
> 
> 1. Clearly after davidz replied to the first mail and the "request for 
> new owners" was dropped, then proceeded to do nothing, ANOTHER request 
> should have been initiated and allowed to go through to the end to allow 
>   someone to have the chance to take the package before it was 
> "orphaned".  This should be MANDATORY, in my opinion.

Normally that happens.  This particular instance happened to line up
with a mass rebuild, which is why it got removed.  Believe me, packages
typically don't get yanked that quickly.

> 2. Packages should never be dropped when they are orphaned until they 
> break.  Breaking can be defined as causing the tree to fail repoclosure, 
> or somethin.  Debian does something similar to this.  The reasoning is 
> that simply because the package is not "maintained" does not mean the 
> package no longer serves a useful purpose to Fedora users.  Clearly that 
> was the case for NetworkManager-vpnc.  It's possible that it will be 
> *more* likely for someone to step up as maintainer if they realize there 
> is a package they use and nobody to update the package (people seem very 
> adamant about updated packages in extras).  Dropping packages carte 
> blanche without at least some sort of individual review is plain wrong.

See above.  Also note that it just got pulled from the repo, not CVS.

josh