frustrated newcomers AND orphaned packages (Was: Rebuild status of FE5)

[Hans de Goede]

Florin Andrei wrote:
> On Mon, 2006-02-27 at 00:04 -0600, Brandon Holbrook wrote:
> 
>> Unique to my request, however, is that my package requires an upgrade of 
>> libshout to at least version 2.0 which was released mid-2003, so doesn't 
>> seem like an unreasonable request.  libshout, it turns out, is already a 
>> package in Extras, owned by Thomas Vander Stichele 
>> (thomas at apestaart.org).  After a suggestion by Jochen, I submitted a RFE 
>> in bugzilla to update libshout to 2.x, or at least create a libshout2 
>> package that I would be more than happy to maintain 
>> (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=181523).  Thomas, 
>> however, has yet to comment on the RFE, and apparently according to the 
>> Wiki's FC5Status, he has yet to rebuild ANY of his packages for FC5, 
>> making his MIA a burden on us all, not just me.
> 
> Deadbeat maintainers should be automatically disowned.
> No sign of life in X amount of time ==> package becomes orphan
> automatically. Make it a policy and put an end to debates.
> 

I've had something similar with a bug in a package which was owned by 
Thomas, I ended up fixing it myself (in a very bad way) and then Thomas 
surfaced, he is also probably reading this, this should get him awake, 
if not then .... ?

And it seems currently nothing is using libshout so an upgrade could be 
done real painless atleast in devel, and should be done for FC5 release 
IMHO, much better then having 2 versions around:
[root at shalem ~]# rpm -q --provides libshout
libshout-1.0.9-4.x86_64
libshout.so.2()(64bit)
libshout = 1.0.9-4
[root at shalem ~]# repoquery -q --whatrequires libshout.so.2
[root at shalem ~]# repoquery -q --whatrequires libshout.so.2()(64bit)
-bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('
[root at shalem ~]# repoquery -q --whatrequires 'libshout.so.2()(64bit)'
[root at shalem ~]#

Regards,

Hans