Dne 21.11.2011 21:56, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" napsal(a):
Given that I'm migrating bunch of legacy init script to native systemd ones and I have come many packages that seem that maintainer(s) have deserted them but for some bizarre reason we still continue to package and keep rolling them between release and now I came across bug 738442 which seriously begs the question that the whole cleanup process needs to be revisited.
Instead of everybody that are doing needed work in the distribution having to run around after maintainers trying to find out if they are still active or not and initiate the unresponsive maintainer policy, cant we revert the process and have maintainer(s) having to reassure their ownership on their package(s) at the begin of each development cycle and if they dont do that before x time, the package(s) they maintain will be automatically orphaned and given up for someone else to grab and take ownership before x time runs out and if nobody does they get remove from the distribution?
I cant image how much resources across the project have been spent on packages that no longer are being actively maintained but have not been removed from the distribution.
JBG
I can't agree more. And I have proposal how to improve a bit this situation:
It would be reasonable, on the beginning of each development cycle, to publish a list of packages which were not touched by it maintainer in previous release. For all these packages, new co-maintainer could stepped up and they would be granted the co-maintainers privileges automatically.
This will not help probably with the initial case you are complaining, i.e. 4 years old unmaintained package, but it would help with others I am willing to maintain but the maintainer is nonresponsive. I remember at leas one example from history when I was not able to reach the maintainer and at the end he was quite angry that I was so daring to call him unresponsive, even though I wanted just to help him. Also, there are other packages I asked for ACL's but never get them confirmed.
Vit