Re: [gentoo-dev] Time based retirements

[Markos Chandras]

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On 12/23/2012 02:06 AM, Doug Goldstein wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 21, 2012 at 7:05 PM, Markos Chandras
> <hwoarang@g.o> wrote:
>>
>>
>
> I see "free" as "dump a lot of orthogonally related packages on to
> the herd that is listed but really the other herd members aren't
> interested in those packages.

Then that herd should not be on metadata.xml. What's the point of
being there if they have absolutely no idea how to maintain the package...
>
> IMHO, if you're really after finding others to take care of
> packages that appear abandoned then you should contact the inactive
> people to see if there's any packages they'd be ok with giving up
> to the proxy-maintainers project or to another developer, but don't
> retire them.
We working on such a policy.

> If the goal here really is to ensure well maintained packages then
> retiring people is akin to treating a screw like a nail and banging
> it in with a hammer, wrong tool... wrong job. For some packages you
> may find another developer right away with interest to fix it, or a
> proxy maintainer but in some cases you might have just kicked the
> only person who had any inclination to fix the package. Some
> packages have 50 users and 49 of them are Gentoo developers or
> would step up and become Gentoo developers to fix the package
> should it become unmaintained and that's great. But some packages
> have 200 users and 1 person willing to be the developer to maintain
> it. You retire that person and you might have well just told those
> 200 people to pick a different distro because inevitably their
> package will be treecleaned.
>
*Sigh*. We don't retire people who actively commit. If that person was
not capable of maintain this package (say if that package has 20 open
bugs for months) then we need to remove him from metadata.xml and say
"sorry folks nobody maintains it"

> If you need a concrete example of a package, that would be MythTV.
> I've been hoping for the day that someone becomes a Gentoo
> developer with the goal of maintaining MythTV for nearly a decade
> but it hasn't happened.
Did you explicitly drop it to maintainer-needed@ so others can know
nobody maintains it? Or do you expect them to guess it by leaving bugs
open on purpose? Telling people on bugzilla that they are welcome to
maintain it is only part of a solution. Did you announce it on a
mailing list? Maybe gentoo-users@

>
> Regarding my use of the words "brain dead", notice I never said
> "Markos is brain dead". What I said was the policy of retiring
> people when what you really want is an active maintainer of
> packages is brain dead. Now I understand that you're involved with
> the enforcement of that policy and therefore identify with it, but
> I would have to encourage you to separate yourself from a policy. I
> unfortunately feel after reading all the comments in this whole
> thread that my original statement is still true.
Like I said we are working on a "less brain-dead" policy so I have
nothing else to contribute to this thread


- -- 
Regards,
Markos Chandras / Gentoo Linux Developer / Key ID: B4AFF2C2
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