On Sat, 2003-11-15 at 17:42, Adrian Bunk wrote: > If a maintainer is MIA, his packages should be orphaned and he should > be kicked out of Debian as soon as possible.
It would be better _not_ to make it a policy to kick a maintainer out of Debian just because he or she is MIA. Faced with this prospect, a developer is more likely to cling to packages that he no longer has time to maintain. (He can do this by remaining visible while still not really doing anything. This is already a problem.) Packages should be taken away from deadbeats, but perhaps deadbeats should be offered some sort of semi-retired status from which they can return if they find more time to contribute to the project. As for the problem of retarded releases ... Debian releases about as fast as it can. The problem is not (as you suggest) that people don't know how old Woody is; it is (as you also note) that the job is very big. Incanting the SC won't make additional work happen. I didn't notice any new ideas in your message about where to find the additional man hours. (Here is one: Encourage developers to use the time that they would normally spend fighting flamewars on debian-* to fixing bugs.) As for dropping packages from a release -- this practice is better than the alternative which is to release Debian with critically broken packages. I think that it may be time for Debian to admit that users that require frequent releases should not expect those releases to come straight from Debian. They should take a look at one of the fine distributions based on Debian or else pay someone to make periodic custom releases that suits their needs. -- Thomas Hood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
