> Submit an updated ebuild.

why should I update an ebuild I have nothing to do with ? 
Then we would have the result gentoo is currently experiencing with many 
packages IMHO.
I don't use osp, but the ebuild is useless for people who do use osp...If 
there would be a maintainer he could update it or people (like me) report 
that there is a new version, but if the dev who is in mood for osp updates it 
sometime nobody feels responsible (like it seems it's the case with some 
not-so-popular packages).
Also if a developer leaves the team (and that happens from time to time ;) the 
ebuild is just dead if no new maintainer is assigned to the ebuild (also 
seems to happen to a few packages)

> Read changelogs.

You won't believe it but in fact, I really do so.
But what's the point about making a changelog entry which tells me "version 
bump" though a diff shows some more changes and should I assume that the one 
who subbmitted the most recent ebuild is also the maintainer ?

> We have real maintainers. For example, I maintain a handful of packages.
>
> Could you be more specific about what constitutes a "real" maintainer?

that means e.g. having something like MAINTAINER="xxxx@g.o" in the 
ebuild.
I believe that you are maintaining packages, many people do so, too. But the 
maintainers should be "hardcoded" in some way just like debian does (they 
have also about 9.000 packages...they have some non-maintained packages, too 
but then you _know_ that the maintainer isn't working on it anymore or 
something like that in gentoo you don't know that...Additionally I hear 
complains that some bugs get assigned to people on bugs.gentoo.org that have 
nothing to do with the bug/package, just because they submitted a new ebuild 
for a package to fix something and then they are meant to be the maintainer ?

There are packages where you can't see what developer carrys about them...you 
often have the choice between two or more (or sometimes none since all people 
mentioned in the changelog aren't in the dev team anymore ;)

Again, I don't know how it's working internally but from a users perspective 
gentoo's maintaining system is quite poor (if you take the packages in the 
tree...recently we broke the 40k files to consider barrier...if you have that 
many files (sure, changelogs, patches etc. are included but anyway ;) a 
"I-care-about-what-I-like" doesn't work for not-so-popular packages...
I don't say this is the case for most packages...It just happens to quite a 
few and not only two or three.

Rainer

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