Dear Fesco: Orphan package process needs work

[Michael Schwendt]

On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 23:53:53 -0400, Christopher Aillon wrote:

> Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:
> > All if would have taken to avoid this issue was a note saying "I'm
> > really busy right now; someone please rebuild my packages and if you
> > like add yourself as a co-maintainer."  Problem solved.  This happens
> > all the time.  We even have SIGs which act as virtual co-maintainers.
> 
> The problem was the maintainer said "I will personally take care of my 
> package" and then didn't, effectively taking it hostage.  At some point 
> after he said he'd rebuild it, it was determined to simply drop it 
> without giving it a fair chance to be reclaimed.

But you and him are used to deadlines like this.

It was simply not enough for the maintainer to make only a promise in
order to escape from the deadline, because maintenance _action_ was
needed.

The process required maintainers to work on the package in a given
time-frame and at least submit a rebuild job, as else the package would
continue to show up on the radar of those who monitor where the FE6
preparation still fails.

> Nothing against david, I'm good friends with him, but the issue is just 
> simply before a package gets dropped, people need a chance to reclaim 
> it.  That did not happen.  The process seems great for when the package 
> maintainer says "no i don't want to deal with this" anymore, but it 
> seems to fall down when they say "I'm still here" but then aren't.

Co-maintainership to the rescue. Where a maintainer rejects co-maintainers,
conflict resolvement through FESCo to the rescue. What else is needed?