During Debconf5, I voiced the opinion that all Debian packages with a priority Standard or higher, as well as packages with a high Popularity Contest rating and development packages with a priority Optional or Extra that many people rely upon for development work, ought to be team-maintained as a matter of Policy. I justified this by pointing out that Debian's Social Contract puts our users among our key priorities, which implies that keeping the packages that our users value the most in excellent shape ought to be the embodiment of this value, and that the best way of meeting this goal is to enforce a policy of team maintenance and easy NMU for those packages.
While my own packages are rather modest contributions to Debian's pool and few of them rate anywhere close to the top in popularity, I honestly feel like practicing what I preach is the best example I could give. Another reason is that several business ideas that I'm working on are monopolizing my time, which means that I'm not as available as I would like to be to participate in Debian. I however see this situation as only temporary, which is why I have not orphaned my packages. Instead, I am soliciting Debian Developers to come as co-maintainers. Interested parties should check my QA page for packages that might interest them and contact me for details. Thanks!
PS: in case this wasn't obvious, the whole point of enforcing team maintenance and allowing NMU on non-RC but annoying bugs is to avoid unresponsive lone wolf maintainers who let tons of bug reports pile up on their packages without fixing them or even acknowledging them. Ubuntu avoids this by allowing anyone on their development team to chip in, while Debian still clings on to each maintainer's absolute reign over their packages, which leaves users of neglected packages completely in the dust.
1 comment:
I am interested in gaim-irchelper. Well, I am not DD or NM. But, want to start with packaging small package.
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