Hi people, I was told that the general public doesn't really know what is going on on the Quality Assurance Group list, so I'll give you a peak preview of the text we are planning to make our mini-policy.
This is not a formal proposal or something (yet), just something that you just might want to read if you're a developer. It also is not correct in some parts, we on the -qa list haven't yet determinednor polished up all the details (waiting on Joey to provide some useful data :), but the point is clear, I hope. I also hope that there won't be too much flaming about this. ;> So, here it is: * cut * The Debian Quality Assurance Group by Vincent Renardias <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, February 1997 and Josip Rodin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, April 1999. -------------------------------------------------------------- version 0.2 The Quality Assurance Group (QA Group) is an attempt of the Debian Project to accelerate fixing bugs in our distribution. The primary function of the group is finding and maintaining orphaned packages, and helping to find and fix various bugs. It is not really a separated entity within the project; it is just a group of people dedicated to seeing the distribution keep the reputation of a quality system that it rightfully earned through the years. When a package is orphaned, one of the QA Group members will make a call for a new maintainer on the general developer mailing list, and inform the Work Needing and Prospective Packages (WNPP) list maintainer to list the package as orphaned by the maintainer (if that was not already done). If nobody applies for the maintainership of the package after two months, we shall proceed depending on the importance of the involved package: * Important package (Priority: standard or higher) - the package will be maintained by QA Group members until a new maintainer for it/them is found. They will be listed on the WNPP page as orphaned by the QA Group. We shall consider lowering the priority of those important packages that don't get a maintainer within three months, and after that treat them as being from the second group, * Not so important package - if there's still nobody volunteering to take care of them after this delay, they will be withdrawn from the unstable distribution and put in the directory 'project/orphaned' on the FTP site. They will be listed on the WNPP page as orphaned by the QA Group. Packages that don't get a maintainer for one year or two Debian releases will be withdrawn completely from the distribution and the FTP site. They will, however, stay archived together with the releases they were in, and mentioned on the withdrawn packages' webpage. Any Debian developer (package maintainer) can become a member of the QA Group, and is welcome to do so. It is done simply by subscribing to our mailing list, and sending a note about what you want to do. You can later unsubscribe from the list if you choose not to participate in the effort any more. QA Group members are in constant search for bugs, inconsistancies and room for improvement in all of our packages. When they find a problem and a way to fix it in an orphaned package, they will be able to do a bugfix upload whenever it is neccessary to do so. Any bug reports that their uploads fix may be closed by them. As noted before, any other interested maintainer who is willing to do an upload of an orphaned package is welcome to ask on the QA Group list for permission to do so. The permission is considered granted if there are no objections in one week. When QA Group members find problems in maintained packages (packages that have an active maintainer), or solutions for already reported problems against those packages, they will send fixes to their maintainers through the bug tracking system (BTS). The QA Group member should offer himself for doing the NMU, but he must not instantly do it. See below for exact delays. If in that period the maintainer does not do the upload himself, the QA Group member who submitted the bug report will try to find a reason why the maintainer didn't do it. If the maintainer really appears not able to do the upload himself, the submitter (or for that matter, any other QA Group member) will proceed and do the bugfix upload. In the normal development period (when only unstable and stable distributions exist), delays are as follows: * fix for a critical/grave bug: 2 days * fix for any kind of security or important bug: 7 days * fix for a bug of normal severity: 20 days * cosmetic fix or a wish implementation: 40 days The latter two types of bug fixes may only be uploaded to unstable (all others may be uploaded to stable if neccessary). The above delays are reduced by a factor of 2 in the month preceding a freeze. During a freeze (when there is a stable, frozen, and unstable distribution), delays are as follows: * fix for a security bug: 1 day * any other bug fix: 7 days The urgent security bug fixes are almost always done by our Security Officers, usually in the matter of hours. The QA Group members making bugfix uploads will need not only to respect the delays above, but will also have to announce their intent to upload on our mailing list, CC:ing the maintainer of the related package, at least 2 days (one day during freeze) before doing the upload. They will have to report on which package they will upload, as well as version, distribution and the exact bug reports to be marked as fixed after the upload. The 'Maintainer' field of those uploaded packages will stay unchanged. However, if QA Group members make 3 consecutive bugfix uploads within two months, with still no action from the actual package maintainer, then the package will be marked orphaned, and the 'Maintainer' field of the package will be set to "Debian QA Group <debian-qa@lists.debian.org>". This will be announced on the developers mailing list and sent to the WNPP maintainer. Notes: The general developer mailing list is [EMAIL PROTECTED] The mailing list of the QA Group is [EMAIL PROTECTED] WNPP page maintainer e-mail is [EMAIL PROTECTED], and the web page location is: http://www.debian.org/doc/prospective-packages.html Web page containing more information on the packages that were withdrawn from the distribution is: http://www.debian.org/doc/withdrawn-packages.html The Security Officers can be reached at the following e-mail address: [EMAIL PROTECTED] * cut * -- enJoy -*/\*- http://jagor.srce.hr/~jrodin/