On Tue, Aug 16, 2005 at 11:03:17AM -0300, Ben Armstrong wrote: > On Tue, 2005-08-16 at 15:46 +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > > It might take a bit longer for the new maintainer > > to be up to speed as compared to when one member of a team gets run over > > by a bus, but that doesn't mean "the project stops". [...] > I think it's important not to underestimate the possible consequences of > it "taking a bit longer to come up to speed" when a maintainer of an > important package suddenly disappears. For some values of "a bit", the > project could suffer a fair amount through such a loss. I can't readily > provide an anecdote for when this ever occurred, but I do have a vivid > imagination.
Exactly. I can't, either; and there have been some takeovers of some pretty serious packages who were maintained by one person in the past. As an example, consider what happened when Joel Klecker died (who was maintaining a package of quite some importance at the time). I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad idea to have team maintenance; on the contrary. But forcing people to maintain packages in teams is, I think, a /very/ bad idea. There are some packages that can easily be maintained by one person alone, even if they're quite important; and forcing a team upon such a package is just a drain on the time of the person who's been maintaining it up to then. -- The amount of time between slipping on the peel and landing on the pavement is precisely one bananosecond -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
