On 12-06-01 at 11:21am, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote: > > [Jonas Smedegaard] > > Is my point clear now (even if is may disagree with my reasoning)? > > I find your point quite clear, but suspect you misunderstood those > claiming the sponsor have responsibilities regarding package > maintenance. > > To me it is obvious that the sponsor is also responsible for a > package, when the maintainer become unresponsive or missing. When the > maintainer is active and available, the sponsor do not have to step in > and the responsibility is "sleeping". :) > > The maintainer is responsible in the day to day maintenance, but when > I sponsor packages I also keep in mind that I might end up having to > care about the package some time in the future if the listed > maintainer looses interest or disappears for other reasons. > > You seem to argue that this should not be the case. Is this because > of your current sponsor practice, or is there some other experience > behind your view on the responsibilities of a package sponsor in > Debian?
I do not mean to say that sponsors should not be held responsible for maintenance, just that such responsibility *currently* isn't obvious - as e.g. Bernd seems to argue - and that I find that problematic. I read Policy as defining Maintainer as _socially_ responsible entity, and Uploader as optional _sub-entity_ when Maintainer cannot also hold _technical_ responsibility. Sponsoring breaks that logic, but I believe we can restore it by treating sponsoring exactly the same as we do teamwork. Let me try to explain...: Once upon a time we had maintainers that maintained and was held responsible for that. Back then I found it sensible that the "Maintainer:" field was prominent throughout our tools - it was hardcoded into each source and binary package (not resolved through network queries via e.g. PTS web pages or who-uploads), and appears in e.g. aptitude. Today I find the Maintainer field a joke. In the future I would like Debian to again use the Maintainer field to indicate who is *responsible* for maintenance. So yes, this is tied to my sponsor practice: I don't do sponsoring (in the common sense of the term), but (when we cannot find a suitable existing team to join) form a two-person team with me as Maintainer and the non-Debian-member as Uploader. That makes only the Uploader field somewhat a joke, similar to how it commonly is for teamwork nowadays. In my opinion a person outside of the Debian WoT does not make sense as a Maintainer, exactly because failures go unnoticed: Sponsors ought to take responsibility but are not on display so if they forget (or even worse, don't care) then we may only discover it much later in frustrated threads like this one. Debian is not a company. We don't pay the work done in money, and don't fire people not performing well. Instead, Debian is a social organism where work is "paid" or "punished by your name being prominently tied to your work. Problem is, if you are not hanging out in Debian social circles you don't feel the encouragement/pressure of your name on Debian billboards. And even if you do, others in Debian have trouble locating you, because you are not tied to our WoT. Please note that the reliability of the WoT is not the issue here - only the practicality of those email addresses being uniquely identifiable and cross-referenced in our structures so who is who is easily identifiable. Some may argue that I steal fame from the person doing the actual work on the package. I feel that I take fame (or shitstorm) of _responsibility_ of the package maintenance, and whoever doing the underlying _changes_ are documented in changelog. If my fellow unofficial maintainer later wants to apply for becoming DM or DD, proof of her/his actual contributions and skills in packaging is clearly tracked. I find sponsoring to be a hack, causing responsibility of maintenance to get blurred, with the consequence of packages going unmaintained too silently too easily. Also, I find that sonsoring is not needed: Anything done in sponsoring can be done by teamwork instead. Sure, for those sponsoring today feeling that their only responsibility is to _upload_ will feel that teaming up with the sponsoree instead is more responsibility - and that is exactly the point: sponsoring *is* more responsibility than just uploading, and today it is not clear, because we tag our sponsorees as maintainers even if in reality they (in my optic) cannot truly carry that role. I truly and sincerely hope that I am not stepping on the toes of non-Debian folks doing packaging work. That is absolutely not my intent - on the contrary I would want to make it more clear who is doing what and with which responsibility attached. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
signature.asc
Description: Digital signature
