On Friday, February 02, 2018 06:30:28 PM Adrian Bunk wrote: > On Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 11:18:28PM -0500, Scott Kitterman wrote: > > On Thursday, February 01, 2018 11:56:21 AM Paul Wise wrote: > > > On Thu, Feb 1, 2018 at 3:14 AM, Andrej Shadura wrote: > > > > For example > > > > > > Here is another example of a low-quality RM bug; removal at request of > > > the maintainer, with no reason stated. > > > > > > https://bugs.debian.org/887554 > > > > > > As a result of this, DSA has to resort to stretch or snapshot.d.o for > > > out-of-band access to our s390x machines. > > > > As the FTP team member that processed that removal, I can tell you I think > > it's perfectly fine. I don't think the FTP team should be in the business > > of second guessing maintainers that say their packages should be removed. > I don't think it should be the sole decision of the maintainer to get > a package removed. > > Like in the case at hand: > Last maintainer upload was in 2014. > Maintainer does nothing (including no action on a "new upstream release" > bug from a user in 2014). > Maintainer files RM bug in 2018. > > Why does the maintainer have the sole decision here? > The package would have been in a better state had it > been a QA-maintained orphaned package since 2014.
Sometimes the maintainer is wrong, but someone has to decide. There are approximately two choices for who decides: 1. Maintainer, who knows about the package. 2. FTP team member, who does not. I guess, in theory, there's a third choice of some committee that reviews these requests before they are referred to the FTP team for action, but I think it would be a horrible idea. There are packages that do fine as QA maintained and there are others that really should not be in Debian unless someone is watching over them. I have asked for packages that I maintained to be removed for that reason. I think the maintainer is the best one to make this call. > > If it's important, someone who cares enough should re-introduce the > > package. > This works nicely, assuming the user who needs the package is a DD and > notices immediately. > > For normal users who are not following unstable the situation > is less rosy. > > And if a normal user would notice immediately, what could he/she do? > Even an RFP to get a perfectly working package re-added just like it > was before the removal has close to zero chance of being acted on. I agree that it's not a general solution. I was referring to this specific case. I also think it's difficult for people who don't routinely process rm requests to appreciate how rare a controversial removal is. It almost never happens (in the context of the large number of requests that get processed). Statistically this is virtually a non-problem. Scott K