Orphaning package

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:13:11 +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:

> On Sat, Apr 26, 2008 at 07:52:19PM -0500, Josh Boyer wrote:
> > 
> > Why?  Grr!  It does not take someone from FESCo to draft such a thing.
> > Anyone, yes ANYONE, can draft something and ask FESCo to ratify it.
> 
> Indeed, but nobody has come with something now, so I think it would be
> nice to have FESCo propose something.
>  
> > Now, frankly I'm not sure something outside of the existing AWOL
> > procedure is needed at all.
> 
> I am sure of the contrary. AWOL is for people who are AWOL. Here we are
> talking about maintainers who are not AWOL but still don't act. It is
> a very different situation. If somebody AWOL has his packages forcefully 
> orphaned there is no problem (it is even right...), while for a maintainer 
> not AWOL, it may be considered to be rude.

Here the maintainer would end the AWOL procedure with a comment in
bugzilla, but afterwards might still not take proper action to fix the bug
(and apply a patch or version upgrade).

A different procedure is needed, in particular for the hard problems where
months pass by without progress. Somebody to rule how to proceed. Somebody
with the decision-power to open up the cvs acls for a package or to
over-rule the package owner if necessary. Else the package collection
cannot be called not community-driven in such areas.

> > I agree.  Open CVS ACLs and co-maintainers _should_ help lessen the
> > occurrence of this.  However, that is still up to the primary maintainer
> > to decide, and we have to take exceptions as they come.
> 
> No, open CVS ACLs and co-maintainers don't help in that case. Well, it
> helps implementing the fix, but it isn't the issue here. Here we just 
> want that the maintainer says 'ok, you seem to be interested, be 
> co-maintainer, implement what you propose I'll check and rebuild'. Or 
> 'Ok, propose a patch'. Or 'This seems to be an easy fix, but there are 
> some issues you are missing, still I don't have currently the time to 
> explain, I'll come back as time permit'.

The last excuse I find questionable. Lack of time is a primary reason to
search for co-maintainers. Else it becomes a hindrance. If specific issues
are known, they can be summed up (briefly!) to give the contributors and
potential co-maintainers some input to think about. Consider it
home-work. Such brief feedback need not be ultimately convincing and may
result in a series of comments over a longer period of time.

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