Re: [gentoo-dev] [RFD] Adopt-a-package, proxy-maintenance, and other musings

[Rich Freeman]

On Thu, Jan 21, 2016 at 5:41 PM,  <waltdnes@××××××××.org> wrote:
>   I think you misunderstood Roy.  He was speaking about "unmaintained
> but perfectly functional software".  You're talking about "a package
> that clearly doesn't build or otherwise simply doesn't work, could not
> have worked for past 3 years".  Between those 2 extremes will be many
> cases of doesn't-work-for-me/works-for-me.  Who'll be the final arbiter?
>

I don't think we need any kind of formalized policy.  The treecleaners
can make a decision and there doesn't need to be any appeals.

The treecleaners should remove packages that are both unmaintained and
broken.  They don't have to have bugs open, and simply having a bug
open for a long time shouldn't be a reason to treeclean on its own.
If a package has a security issue or is just generally crippled then
it should be removed.  That might sound a bit subjective, but I don't
think that is a problem - if the treecleaners want to make a statement
of policy they can do so.

And if somebody disagrees with the treecleaners then they can go ahead
and volunteer to maintain the package.  Maintainers aren't actually
obligated to fix non-security bugs at all, by the way (though doing so
would certainly be nice).  But, they'll get to listen to all the grief
about problems they cause instead of the treecleaners.  Obviously if
things get out of hand there are ways to escalate.

In any case, I consider the labeling of these unmaintained packages as
maintainer-needed as a good thing, even if some get treecleaned as a
result.  Part of our social contract is not hiding problems.
Unmaintained packages should be clearly labeled as such.  And I'm all
for some suggestions that have been offered to hghlight packages they
use which are unmaintained (I'd suggest that instead of messing with
eclasses we simply put that feature in portage though).

-- 
Rich