* Anthony Towns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2004-03-13 14:46]: > > retired can simply get added again, and that others have to do > > more checks. > > So, is it possible for them to fail these checks? If one of them is: > > "Last time you were in Debian, you dropped out of contact for six > months, your packages got NMUed and orphaned, and your account got > disabled after you didn't reply to a maintainer ping. Are you going > to do better this time?" > > "Probably not."
Well, I don't think asking a question like this makes sense anyway. It's much better to look at the actual behaviour. While technical or philosophical questions can easily be asking with a rigid set of questions, this does not apply to the question whether someone has enough time and motivation. So I think the check would be in a way where the AM looks at the behaviour and can from this draw conclusions and suggests, such as suggest that the maintainer should get co-maintainers. In general, I don't think that orphaning the packages of an inactive maintainer is the best solution. Unfortunately, it's the only solution we have at the moment, but we certainly have to find better ways. One better solution is to have co-maintainers. Another solution is to have a group of QA people who are willing to help busy maintainers for a few months. At the moment, we unfortunately cannot tell a busy maintainer, "it's okay, we'll take care of your packages while you're busy". However, I hope to help building a QA team which will provide this service. This is much more useful then orphaning a package, and then removing it a few months later because nobody picked it up (which happens more than you might think). [ Also, removing packages is not the best solution, as mentioned previously, because the user's are no longer supported. ] -- Martin Michlmayr [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
