Jay, Thank you for that good sir, I will do just that (I'm sure by the time I wrap my head around orchestrating a transition of ICU to version 54.1; someone would have taken over - and perhaps I'd be able to contribute through them at that time and work my way up to a co/maintainer over time).
Really appreciate your response -> your first paragraph actually motivated me even more. Cheers - *Richard B. Winters* On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 1:26 PM, Jay Berkenbilt <q...@debian.org> wrote: > > My suggestion would be to read through the material at > https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMaintainer and take it from there. Sounds > like you're about where I was when I started with Debian in 2003: I was > experienced Linux/C/C++ developer using tiff, xerces, and icu at work. I > took over the packages with the help of sponsors and initially as a > co-maintainer and used my experience there toward becoming a full debian > developer about 18 months later. > > I'm afraid I don't have time or energy to help with the sponsorship, but > maybe you can find someone who can take over maintaining icu with the > intention of sponsoring you or who can sponsor you to take over > maintenance. I got my start with the tiff packages by managing a > transition that corrected an inadvertent binary compatibility problem > without an soname bump, and through that, earned enough of a reputation > to be able to move through the new maintainer process pretty easily. ICU > presents an opportunity to do something similar. Take a look at > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=757025. When I created > that, ICU 53 was out, but I was not able to get the transition done for > jessie. Now ICU 54 is out, and one of the first jobs of icu's next > maintainer will be, post jessie, to orchestrate a transition of icu to > version 54.1 or whatever is current at the time. This would be a good > way to cut your teeth on slightly more advanced package maintenance > activities required with library packages. > > -- > Jay Berkenbilt <q...@debian.org> >