Boström, On 25/02/16 11:30 AM, Boström Kacper wrote: > > Thanks Ben again for clarifying. > > > > I would further comment that it is orphaned not because the Debian > Live team wished it so, but because the former live-build upstream > maintainer gave up the package, making it no longer possible to > maintain it properly within Debian, except to patch it for as long as > it seems to still be needed and we have the resources to keep doing so. > > > > Reading ITP #804315 > <https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=804315> it seems > that disputes between the live-build maintainer and the Debian Live > team lead to the package being orphaned. I don’t know the history > behind the dispute but what prevents it from happening again to a > potential new maintainer? > > >
Broadly speaking, when are there ever guarantees in human relationships? But here's my personal take on what prevents this from happening again, from 20 years of working with Debian, absorbing our cultural values, and watching what works, and what doesn't: Debian welcomes contributions from a diverse group of developers, often with conflicting ideas about how to carry out their work. We celebrate diversity by accepting into the archive many different tools, often maintained by different people with different visions. And this is not confined to non-core packages, but also affects core packages. Therefore, we have debootstrap, but also cdebootstrap; we have apt, but also aptitude; and there are many others, too numerous to list here. So, we could have also had live-build and live-wrapper maintained in parallel. From what I read as the conflict unfolded, I believe that was honestly how the Debian CD team believed it would work out. It did not. And that is a shame. To the best of our ability, as a culture, Debian strives to be inclusive. We provide a means to discuss things openly, have a dispute resolution process, should things really break down, and each developer is expected to remain respectful and professional in our dealings with each other throughout these discussions. There are, of course, bad days for all of us, and friction results. Sometimes, there is sufficient friction over a sufficiently long time, and/or with such acuteness that individual developers decide to part ways with us. I don't think that's a dynamic that can ever be entirely eliminated. It's unfortunate that when this happens, some people who depended on their good work get left in the lurch. And that's what we're facing now. And I think that's the thrust of your question: how do we prevent it from happening again? Well, as I said, there are no guarantees. But I would say that the foundation of making it not happen again is, we each look in the mirror, and ask ourselves if we're living up to the highest possible standard of working collaboratively with professionalism and respect. We each make personal decisions that better the whole project. Corporately, we encourage each other to do the same. And we make allowances for each other having bad days, and do our best to diffuse tensions when they flare up, often out of proportion with the issues at hand. But equally important to this exercise in introspection and personal growth, we do our best to ensure that we have healthy teams with breadth of experience with the code and responsibilities sufficiently spread across that team so that if one person leaves, the rest of the team can carry on without them. Even absent any unfriendly parting of ways, people can, and do change priorities in their lives and move on or sometimes, tragically, pass away. We need to ensure our teams can survive that kind of event. With live-build, we did not have that breadth, and now we're suffering the consequence. I'm not standing up as a model for others to emulate, as I know I have not always been satisfied with my own performance regard to the ideals I've expressed above. However, I will say that today, and looking forward to the near future, I'm doing my bit to try to make Debian a healthy place to work, and commit to you that I'll be constantly on the lookout for where I fall short of this high ideal, and face my own failings with humility. I love Debian (inasmuch as it's possible to love any group this large :) and hurt to see the hurt that was caused to others in this schism (and continues to have repercussions even today!) I don't want to see this happen again any more than you do, and will do whatever I can, within my limited means, to prevent it. Regards, Ben
