contacting non-responsive maintainer: Cristian Balint? (was Re: rawhide report: 20090321 changes)

[Alex Lancaster]

>>>>> "JK" == Jesse Keating  writes:

JK> On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 06:32 -0700, Alex Lancaster wrote:
>> one small problem in the %files section, then it should work.  Either
>> way, can we open up the ACLs in the meantime?

JK> Have you started the nonresponsive maintainer process, or otherwise
JK> contacted the maintainer's sponsor in order to get an idea what's going
JK> on?

I have, on multiple occasions, tried to contact the maintainer,
Cristian Balint.  Looking at the FAS2 site, it appears that, you
(Jesse Keating) are his sponsor (btw, it took me a while to figure out
how to find out that info, it is not obvious how to do it from the
FAS2 webpage).

The maintainer has sometimes updated the packages, but not in response
to any requests, and has not (in the last 3-4 months) responded
directly to any questions about the ACLs or broken deps.

Here is the log of activity required for the non-responsive maintainer
policy:

1) First attempt at contact: on 2009-01-17 by Nicolas Mailhot to fix
   mapnik package:

   http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=480461

   No response.

2) Second attempt: on 2009-03-04 Dan Horák requested maintainer
   respond to broken deps:

   http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=488490#c0

   No response.

2) Third attempt: on 2009-03-14, I also reiterated request:

   https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=488490#c2

   No response.

  Fourth attempt: on 2009-03-20, I attempted another contact:

   http://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=488490#c3

   No response as yet.

4) In several threads on fedora-devel-list I have asked about opening
   up these ACLs, which implicitly includes a question about how to
   contact the maintainer:

http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-March/msg00214.html
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2009-March/msg00281.html

(and I have also asked on #fedora-devel)

I have also sent private mail to rezso at fedoraproject.org, regarding
openin up ACLs, as early as 2009-01-05, to no response.

So at this point, I believe we should be at step (4) on:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Policy_for_nonresponsive_package_maintainers

in which many reasonable attempts to contact the maintainer have been
made.  If the above f-d-l posts aren't sufficient, consider this
request as the one that asks if anybody knows how to contact the
maintainer.

In general it appears that even a sponsor may not be able to fix the
issues any case, because of the ACLs, see:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_sponsor_responsibities#Fix_issues_caused_by_sponsored_maintainers

However, in this case, I assume that Jesse has the appropriate
privileges to do this.

Actually, I don't really care if the ACLs are opened immediately
(although they should eventually be), just that *somebody* with
cvsadmin privileges in the meantime rebuild the packages to fix the
deps.  I will continue to supply patches on the above bug until it
builds, and hopefully somebody will apply them and rebuild.

(As an aside: surely the obvious fact of broken deps in Beta should
pre-empt or otherwise short-circuit the lengthy and somewhat
cumbersome non-maintainer process to open up ACLs or have a cvsadmin
person apply fix.)

Alex