First, thanks to Lars for drawing our attention to an important topic and for taking an initiative that is long overdue.
Lars, I agree fully with what you say. When it comes to team maintenance I would go even further than you do. You say: > Mandatory teams for packages seems ridiculous to me. > Lots of packages are so small that having to arrange a > team for them, even if it is only the effort to set up > and subscribe to a team mailing list, is wasteful. Not > everyone likes to work in a close team, either, and we > shouldn't exclude them. I don't think that it is ridiculous to require that every package have a team behind it---i.e., at least two maintainers. First, if someone can't find ONE other person willing to be named as a co-maintainer of a given package then I would seriously doubt that that package (or that person) is an asset to Debian. Second, putting packages in the custody of a team makes it easy for a tired maintainer to relinquish control. If the team works via an alioth project then there are many benefits. Code is kept under version control and thus backed up; the change history can be easily viewed by anyone; the mailing list becomes an easily browsed history of package development. Team maintainership is working very well for some other distributions. I would support requiring team maintainership because TM will be beneficial in almost all cases and making it a requirement it cuts off a lot of useless discussion. There are several packages in Debian that are notoriously undermaintained and whose maintainers have mused from time to time about getting help, but haven't bothered to do it. They should be forced to get help, or to give up maintaining those packages. Consistent with this view, I have just created teams for all my packages even though most of them are mature. I am glad to have the help; having new people to work with has given me some new ideas. Combined with the principle of non-responsibility (constitution ยง2.1), the institution of exclusive solitary package ownership has made some Debian packages into bastions of untended bugs. -- Thomas Hood -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]