On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 12:08:57PM -0500, John Goerzen wrote: > On Wed, May 10, 2006 at 06:12:52PM +0200, Wouter Verhelst wrote: > > > I have not withdrawn my intent to take over Bacula. I am volunteering > > > to do some pretty significant work on it, and have already done so. > > > > You should not go ahead and remove José from maintenance over his > > objection if he offers you co-maintenance. Your reason for hijacking > > bacula seems to have been that José was slacking, not anything personal > > or some such. In that case, I can understand that you want to take over > > Well, I would say it's more that he has written very poor code -- some > of which has been broken for several years -- and has not made much > effort to fix it.
Okay. That wasn't very clear from your initial post. > For at least some of it, he does not believe there is a problem. In itself, this shouldn't be a reason for hijacking a package (though I'll admit that it can be a compelling argument). > Take a look at the BTS if you want. My first NMU closed 22 bugs (or > will, once it gets out of NEW). > > > so that the work gets done. But if José says "I'm more than willing to > > let you help out, but I still want to work on it", then that should be > > respected; this is how it's always done in Debian. > > I have made it clear to everyone -- him included -- that I would be > happy to receive patches. I will, however, be sure to review them > before applying them. Sure. > > Of course, if I misunderstood something, or you have some compelling > > reason to block José from cooperating that you haven't talked about yet, > > I'm happy to be enlightened. > > The most compelling reason: > > http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/[EMAIL PROTECTED];arch=source > > Please note that the pending upload bugs on that page are ones that are > fixed in my NMU. Right. > There are all sorts of other long-term blatant problems with Bacula that > weren't reported to the BTS. His AM had already mentioned quite a few > to him back in February. I don't believe jltallon is yet suited to > maintain a package of this complexity. Okay; this explains quite a lot. If bacula really is in a sorry shape (I wouldn't know, I don't use it), then what you're planning to do would seem to be a good idea. It's just that I'm quite concerned about the precendent this creates. Up until now, people have abandoned packages when other people felt the packages in question where poorly maintained. I remember the case of the mozilla packages back in pre-woody times, when it was felt that the maintainer was doing a very poor job at it, too; eventually, though, he was persuaded to hand over maintenance of mozilla to Takuo KITAME, who had already been doing some NMU's, if I recall correctly; I'd have preferred seeing something similar here, if that had been possible. If not... I'll agree that uncommon problems require uncommon solutions, but then you have to make clear it's an uncommon problem you're talking about. Your initial post didn't do that. That being said, The only way you can get experienced developers is by allowing people to maintain packages and gain experience. While this is usually done through having people maintain a small package, and having them take on larger packages as time goes on, there is something to be said for people who jump in the deep, and learn as time goes on, which is what José did with the bacula packages. It didn't turn out to work, but then noone is infallible. However, if José is willing to learn, I do think it'd be nice if he would remain as co-maintainer. Having a seasoned developer like yourself in the team to help out and explain where and why things are good or bad will surely help in the long run. In light of that, and in light of his past contributions (good and, well, 'not as good') which he's already done, please consider allowing José a more active role on the bacula packages than "he can send in patches like everyone else." -- Fun will now commence -- Seven Of Nine, "Ashes to Ashes", stardate 53679.4
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