Rebuild status of FE5 (Was: Re: Please rebuild your packages in the development tree of Fedora Extras)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 28 Feb 2006 18:47:02 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

> Am Sonntag, den 26.02.2006, 20:21 +0100 schrieb Aurelien Bompard:
> >[...]
> > > So, how to proceed? Bug the maintainers with a E-Mail directly? Probably
> > > a good idea. I'll try to write a script that does this.
> > This is the best idea at the moment IMHO.[...]
> > Anyway, a direct mail reminder will probably help a lot.
> 
> Done some minutes ago (sorry, I didn't find time for it earlier);
> Initial results:
> 
> Keith G. Robertson-Turner: "This account is protected against spam,
> using the SpamArrest service, which is a 'C/R' or 'Challenge/Response'
> service. [...]" 
> 
> /me wonders if Keith was wise enough to whitelist the E-Mail address
> used by bugzilla.redhat.com. Keith? 

I believe he has been active in one of his tripwire bug reports in
bugzilla recently.

> aaron.bennett_AT_olin.edu -- "Delivery failed."
> colin_AT_fedoraproject.org --  "User unknown"
> lemenkov at newmail.ru -- "User unknown"
> 
> :-((
> 
> :-((
> 
> /me wonders how many of the other mail addresses from owners.list don't
> work but chooses to simply ignore that for now.

Well, this time around you do some of the things I did for FE3/4.
Discovering old packages and orphans, invalid mail addresses, invalid
addresses in bugzilla, sending packagers reminders, helping out with fixes
for GCC, and so on. It is also something which decreases the fun in
"sponsoring contributors". Theoretically, the time which is necessary to
"get to know" other people should be longer before somebody would feel
good about "sponsoring" somebody else from the other end of the world.
All you get from some people in return for reviews, guidance, approval,
sponsorship, is that they drop off silently or complain on IRC. It's
really sad. I agree. But hey, the single last thing that protects the
repository from daily breakage is the review and sponsorship process. If
we removed that last hurdle (and everyone, remember, updates and upgrades
don't need any reviews as with old fedora.us QA procedures), we could put
up the wooden sign which reads "playground".

I do like the idea of "hostile takeover" of potentially orphaned packages
where current official packager doesn't respond to bug reports and private
mail.

It is in the community's best interest to have actively maintained
packages within Fedora Extras. It ought not result in anarchy, however.
Hence it should happen in accordance with well-defined policies,
tracking and perhaps explicit approval. Because there's a tendency among
some packagers to treat package upgrades lightly.