jkmeter libzita-convolver

[Reinhard Tartler]

Free Ekanayaka <freee at debian.org> writes:

> Hi Reinhard,
>
> |--==> On Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:22:20 +0100, Reinhard Tartler <siretart at tauware.de> said:
>
>   RT> Felipe Sateler <fsateler at gmail.com> writes:
>   >>>IMO, at least one (preferably active) team member should be
>   >>>co-maintainer of every package adopted by pkg-multimedia. I'd even
>   >>>propose to make it mandatory for new packages.
>   >>>
>   >>>What do you think?
>   >>
>   >>I'm not really convinced... after all, if the package is well
>   >>maintained it should be OK. If the original maintainer goes MIA, the
>   >>package can just be removed...
>
>   RT> While I also agree that my suggestion is quite strong, I don't buy your
>   RT> argument. Let's have a look at our packages:
>
>   RT> 46 packages:
>   RT>  - http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=debian-multimedia%40lists.debian.org
>
>   RT> 26 packages:
>   RT>  - http://qa.debian.org/developer.php?login=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org
>
>   RT> makes a total of 72 packages. How do you determine if the original
>   RT> package maintainer went MIA and should be removed from the team?
>
> If the package is sponsored by a team member, it would make sense to
> set the Maintainer to:
>
> pkg-multimedia-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org
>
> and include the contributor and the uploader himself in Uploaders
> (sorry if this was implicit for you).

No need to be sorry. This is indeed on what we agreed when we merged the
teams.

> Bug reports are usually a good way to get an idea of the health of a
> packages. If there are too many, the package is probably not very
> actively maintained. On the other hand if there is none, that smells
> like no user is really caring about the package.

I think this approach is too naive. Let's take for example ardour, it
has currently 56 open bug reports, vlc has 115. I wouldn't say we'd want
to remove these two packages from the team because of poor maintenance.

On the other hand, a package with 0 reports might just be a small
library package in excellent condition (e.g. libdca)!

> The QA pages Reinhard points are a very good way to get a sense of the
> situation, I think all team members should go through them once every
> while.

Yes, I fully agree here.

But we perhaps need some critera and workflow how to propose a package
to be removed from the team.

>   >>While it is always good to have co-maintainers, I don't really think
>   >>we are in a position to require that, specially from an active team
>   >>member, since manpower seems to be running a bit short.
>
>   RT> But manpower is exactly my point! IME additional package require more
>   RT> manpower that we don't have. My suggestions says basically: Extra
>   RT> packages are only accepted if the addition doesn't reduce the manpower
>   RT> per package ratio.
>
> I agree, so it makes sense to explicitly to a contributor whether he
> is ready to maintain the package even after the first upload.

is there a "communicate" missing above?


> I believe that some decrease of the manpower per package ratio is
> unavoidable, because team members will have to review the
> contributor's work. However you can consider this a trade-off with the
> hope that a given contributor will eventually improve to the point
> where less or no review work is needed. That will pump up the ratio :)

Exactly!

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4