On 25/09/23 14:29, Wookey wrote:
It's actually quite well-maintained, just not by the maintainer:
someone else has uploaded the last 3 upstream versions via
debian-mentors.
I think this example shows the need for a level of maintainership that
sits between "fully maintained" and "orphaned". (Or a rethinking of the
concept of "orphan packages".)
Right now in Debian there is a distinction between:
1) maintained packages (Maintainer: "foo")
and
2) orphaned packages (Maintainer: "Debian QA Group").
State 1 is the desired state of a package: somebody (a single person or
a team) looks after this package, packages and tests new releases, and
is expected to respond to inquiries (bug reports, MRs, NMUs) within a
reasonable time.
State 2 is an undesired state that should be addressed. Somebody from
the QA team (= theoretically the whole of Debian) may have a look at it
in case of transitions or RC bugs. But what Debian really desires is
that somebody will adopt this package and put their name in the
Maintainer: field.
What I think is needed is a state 3 (or 1.5) that formalizes what Wookey
described: there is an informal group of people that may take care of a
package, but they don't feel like having their names attached to it nor
want the responsibility of being the ones in charge for timely fixes or
quick replies.
The way I picture it, "state 3" packages would have something like
"Debian Caretaking Team" in the Maintainer: field (not the usual "QA
Group", and have autotests in lieu of a specific person/team that takes
care of manually testing the package.
Has such a third category already been discussed or explored?
--
Gioele Barabucci
