I'm afraid I still want to beat this dead horse. I think it is a mistake to think that this requirement is even meaningful. Remember that we are a project of volunteers; things get done by the people who have time, inclination and (hopefully) competence to do them.
Requiring that only one person is somehow `authorised' to do something or `be responsible' for something when everyone might otherwise be perfectly happy for many people to do it, and when we can't `hold anyone responsible' for anything anyway, is unhelpful. I can think of only two possible reason for saying that a package might be required to have only one maintainer: 1. Decisionmaking in case of disagreement. This is a red herring; noone is suggesting that there be no way of making such decisions, and if a group of co-maintainers can't agree on who should make the decision we'll end up with one or the other or both versions of a package anyway. 2. Blame. `It's your _fault_ there hasn't be a new release of program Y since September.' This is unhelpful - remember, we're a volunteer project, and we will get nowhere by making participation un-fun for people by guilt-tripping them and assigning blame, &c. Instead, one could just observe that Y needed an update and do it, causing less emotional hassle, and without needing exactly one maintainer. Ian.
