On Samstag, 21. Mai 2016 10:24:06 CEST Lars Wirzenius wrote: > Et cetera. Debian has one set of quality factors it particularly cares > about, and some upstreams think differently.
Yes, I seen all those reasons you mentioned. I just wonder how about if upstreams can learn easily how to work together with Debian developers and maintainers which basically would mean offloading some of the work involved? Still, the turn around time between upstream and debian release would be quite high for Debian stable users, but maybe part of such a collaboration could be to also provide newer releases via backports. Also… if upstream wants to release the built packages even quicker to testers or adventurous people, why not allow them to put newer versions of the official packages into their own repo while still integrating them with the official repo? For Owncloud for example this could lead at least to *compatible* packaging. Right now switching between Debian packages and upstream packages basically destroys a working Owncloud installation and requires quite some manual interaction to get things working again. But with compatible packages people could easily switch between "I use stable packages", "I use backport packages" and "I don´t care I want the latest I add the upstream repo". I wonder about some kind of adopt an upstream within a Debian team kind of approach. A landing page and mailing list where upstream can write in for getting help and advice and voicing their needs. And when there are people in Debian willing to work with upstream they can build a team. May still not be suitable for some upstreams or some upstreams not be suitable for Debian, but I got the impression that Debian may be seen as elitist and basically unapproachable by some upstreams – and that in quite some cases like with the Owncloud packaging a different approach would be possible. (Actually that is what I thought for a long time as well, until I found sponsors for some package I wanted in the archive and well, until Debconf 2015 in Heidelberg.) I do think spelling out an invitation to work together officially can help to attract more upstreams to work closer with Debian. -- Martin
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