Orphan Package: system-config-cluster (was Re: Simplify non-responsive maintainers policy Part 2)

[Steven Whitehouse]

Hi,

On Wed, 2009-10-21 at 11:10 -0700, Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 10:11:37AM +0100, Steven Whitehouse wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Jim Parsons left Red Hat a little while back and the only contact
> > details I have is his Red Hat email address, which is of course no
> > longer valid. I've opened a bugzilla #530027 as per the unresponsive
> > maintainer procedure, but I was hoping to be able to skip the section
> > regarding sending of messages since there seems little point sending to
> > an email address which I know (and which other Red Hat employees can
> > easily verify) will not be answered.
> > 
> > Instead I've emailed the one other person who had access to that package
> > and that has also gone unanswered (see the bugzilla).
> > 
> > There are a number of outstanding bugs filed against
> > system-config-cluster (including the fact that it seems that it has not
> > passed an initial review) which I've listed out in the bugzilla.
> > 
> > I would like to either fix (or preferably just remove) this package as
> > it creates configs for GFS2 which are incorrect and is thus causing
> > confusion to all who attempt to use it.
> > 
> > Therefore this is my formal request to become maintainer of this
> > package,
> > 
> I've talked to FESCo people on IRC and after some discussion I've gone ahead
> and reassigned ownership.  Since people seem to like this, if you don't want
> to maintain and fix this package, please go through the orphan process
> rather than just retiring it.
> 
Ok. Thanks, I'll do my best to do the right thing here...

To clarify some issues which came up during the discussions here, which
have also been discussed by the cluster team, here are a few more notes
on the topic.

system-config-cluster is currently dead as an upstream project. If
someone wants to take over the fedora package, then they will first have
to take over the upstream side of things too.

According to the instructions on the wiki, the correct procedure for
such packages is to retire them rather than orphan them (as per
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Orphaned_package_that_need_new_maintainers) although confusingly that page doesn't either point to or describe the retiring process (it seems to be only mentioned here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/PackageMaintainers/PackageEndOfLife so far as I can see).

Now taking into account the comments above, what I propose is to have a
period of time in which we see if someone else will take on the package,
and if not, I'll retire it.

So here, for the first time of asking, is a request to see if anybody
will take on the upstream maintenance of system-config-cluster.

I have also discovered some further information about Conga (the
preferred solution to GUI cluster configuration) and why it is now
preferred. Some time ago an investigation was undertaken to try and
gauge the usage of s-c-c and Conga and it was found that Conga had a
larger user base. It also seemed that maintaining two tools to perform
(largely) the same job was not a sensible use of development & test
time.

Now there were also some comments about Conga relating to the more
complicated set up, however the Conga team have actively been working on
solving some of those issues and the latest versions are (I understand)
improved in this area. The team however are actively looking for further
suggestions, so if anybody has any ideas, please open a bugzilla against
Conga and let them know.

So I hope that goes some way towards addressing the concerns of people
who are worried about the loss of this system-config-cluster package.

Lastly, thanks for helping me sort out all the issues surrounding this
package. It is very much appreciated,

Steve.