On October 10, 2022 7:56:07 AM UTC, Gerardo Ballabio
<gerardo.balla...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Didier Raboud wrote:
>> The last aspect would also be to completely remove the source-package-level
>realms; within a subset, there would be no package-specific maintainers or
>vetoes; disputes would move "out" from source-package-level to subset-level.
>
>Uhm. This makes me wonder what the real goal of this proposal is.
>
>Is it about restricting the ability of DDs to upload any package
>(something that has never really caused any real issues so far as I'm
>aware)? Or is it really about having a way to work around
>uncollaborative maintainers of specific packages?
>
>If it's the latter, I'm afraid it could have more negative effects
>than positive. While "package-specific maintainership" does have its
>problems, it is essentially what has been keeping Debian working until
>now. People take care of their packages because, well, they're their
>packages. If packages aren't assigned to maintainers anymore, I fear a
>situation of "it's everybody's responsibility, therefore it's nobody's
>responsibility".
>
>There are in fact many team-maintained packages, and that's working
>well, but it works because people *voluntarily* agreed to collective
>maintainership, and those teams are usually rather small anyway, with
>an even smaller number of people taking the lead. Those will still
>have veto power.
I think this is generally correct. Ultimately, I think moving in the suggested
direction will ultimately add bureaucracy and take away motivation.
Today, who decides a technical question is relatively straightforward. In the
first instance the maintainer (or maintainers + uploaders) decides and people
who disagree have the option to escalate to the tech ctte. If we do away with
maintainers, everything will either be free for all revert wars or some other
structure will be needed to make decisions. I don't find the idea of doing the
same work with additional mandatory bureaucracy at all appealing.
There are circumstances within the archive where having more structure makes
sense and that's where teams have naturally formed.
I deal with more than enough process and procedure when I'm paid to put up with
it. Let's not further bureaucratize Debian.
Scott K
