multiple uploaders

[Reinhard Tartler]

On Tue, May 26, 2015 at 8:49 AM, Felipe Sateler <fsateler at debian.org> wrote:
> On 26 May 2015 at 09:38, Sebastian Ramacher <sramacher at debian.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 2015-05-26 14:33:41, IOhannes m zmölnig (Debian/GNU) wrote:
>> > hmm, nobody ever answered to this email.
>> >
>> > mira's recent mail regarding a 2nd uploader of qxgedit reminded me of
>> > that, and i would like to re-ask:
>> >
>> > How much do we want to enforce our ">=2 uploaders per package" rule?
>> >
>> > If a package does not have a 2nd uploader (any longer), should it be
>> > removed from the team (e.g. after some grace period)?
>>
>> I think the rule is useless. It doesn't prevent us from having two persons on
>> Uploaders and both are MIA.
>
> I have been thinking we should ditch the rule as well. I think having
> a common home (even if a single maintainers is currently active)
> should make it easier for third-parties interested in multimedia to
> collaborate, and that may as well mean co-maintaining previously
> singly-maintained packages. Plus, many packages do not require much
> activity anyway.

Well, it really boils down what we want the team's reputation to be.
The rule tests whether or not there is *team* commitment, and for that
you need *more than one person* actively caring for a package. If a
package fails the "two active uploaders" test, how can you argue that
the package was "team maintained"?

If the majority of the packages in team pkg-multimedia are effectively
taken care of by a single person, how is that package simply not team
maintained at all? I'd argue it is worse, because missing maintainers
and defacto orphaned packages are harder to identify. If this is to
become the norm, I'd argue to rather put the "Debian QA Team" as
maintainer of the package.

Do we really want team pkg-multimedia to become another "Debian QA
Team" with focus on multimedia packages? I would find that rather sad
and for sure would love pkg-multimedia to have, and maintain, a better
reputation than that.

>> I'd rather orphan/remove the packages from the
>> team that are clearly no longer maintained and nobody in the team cares about
>> them anymore.
>
> Any idea how to determine "clearly no longer maintained"? I think the
> 2-maintainers rule was intended to provide a way to demarcate that
> line, but it didn't fulfill its promise.

Because the rule isn't enforced properly.  I'd rather argue to take
the "Maintainer" field more seriously, that is, for packages that are
taken care of by a single person to have that person in that field, or
if such a person cannot be found, orphan the package properly.


-- 
regards,
    Reinhard