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[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Tue, 2006-04-25 at 23:01 +0100, Paul wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> > He said that is up to the debian developer as to how long they want to 
> > maintain the package. He went on to say that as long as the application 
> > function and was free from release critical bugs, then debian will 
> > continue to ship it. He also said, that if a upstream vendor is not 
> > maintaining the application anymore (or seems not to be) then its up to 
> > the packager to fix bugs etc.
> > 
> > I am not sure if other agree on that approach or not.
> 
> No. I'm not in favour of this approach. IMO, it's actually what has kept
> Debian back as a distro. They have *way* too much legacy hanging around
> them which makes build times and build sizes insanely huge. I know I've
> fixed bugs on a few packages I package for FE on z88dk (especially) and
> have submitted them to the authors. However, doing this then starts to
> eat into other work.
> 
> Sure it's fun, but is it worth it - especially if the upstream
> maintainer has dropped the package?

In the context of Fedora Extras, I would agree with the Debian policies
on this point.  It's not for Fedora as a whole to decide if a package is
worth it... it's up to the packager.  However, the packager has to
realize that in doing this, they are picking up the reins for upstream
(which may be a lot more work than simply packaging the application.)

Is there a time when a packager should be forced to drop a package?  It
sounds like Debian has decided that "release critical bugs" are their
qualification.  Defining this based on bugs makes sense to me as well --
if the package is high enough quality that it continues to build and run
then there's no sense abandoning it.  If it has serious bugs and the
packager is not able to fix it and there is no upstream to help out,
then the software should not be shipped.

-Toshio
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