* Andreas Metzler <ametz...@bebt.de> [241224 11:53]:
> On 2024-12-23 Gioele Barabucci <gio...@svario.it> wrote:
> > On 22/12/24 06:56, Andreas Metzler wrote:
> >> On 2024-12-22 Sean Whitton <spwhit...@spwhitton.name> wrote:
> >>> On Sat 21 Dec 2024 at 10:23pm +01, Gioele Barabucci wrote:
>
> >>>> We have a mechanism for when you feel responsible: "Maintainer: $me".
>
> >>>> What is being discussed here is a mechanism for shared, collective,
> >>>> diffused responsibility: "If this package is in bad shape, the whole
> >>>> Debian project should be held responsible. Either it gets fixed by
> >>>> someone or it gets RM'd by someone."
>
> >>> Hmm, what you describe seems more like an orphaned package.
>
> >> +1 on that. The proposed scheme is exactly how "Maintainer: Debian QA
> >> Group" works.
>
> > Not exactly.
> > https://lintian.debian.org/tags/uploaders-in-orphan.html
>
> >> uploaders-in-orphan
> >> Packages with their maintainer set to packa...@qa.debian.org,
> >> i.e. orphaned packages, should not have uploaders.
> >> Adopt the package properly if you want to resume its maintenance.
> [...]
>
> "The proposed scheme" was supposed to be refering to the grander idea of
> having a package with nobody being responsible but with "Debian" taking
> care. That is exactly how qa maintained packages work. Imho the main
> problem we have there is not that they are maintained badly, the
> relevant packages often have high quality packaging, however there is
> loads and loads of cruft that really should be removed but is not
> because nobody is responsible.
The difference seems to boil down to "this package can be adopted
into the classic maintainership model" ('orphaned') and "this
package is someone-else-does-it-maintained and if its actually
orphaned nobody will notice".
Probably fine until actually nobody cares anymore, and then we have
a bigger mess than we already have today with actually-orphaned
packages.
Anyone who wants to introduce this concept should also describe how
these packages will be maintained/QAed/removed when all interested
people vanish.
Chris
