Dear Fesco: Orphan package process needs work

[Christopher Aillon]

Denis Leroy wrote:
> I hereby claim my interest in picking up orphaned NetworkManager-vpnc 
> (wiki updated).
> 

Thanks, Denis.

I'd like to make a request to FESCO or whomever to please take another 
look at the process for orphaning packages.  In particular, I'm 
extremely unhappy that NetworkManager-vpnc was dropped from the repository.

I did some investigating into what happened, and this is the general way 
things went:

- All packages were tagged as needs.rebuild, mails sent out.
- Davidz didn't rebuild the package.
- Notting sends davidz a mail saying the package was going to be 
orphaned, and cc'd extras-list? asking for a new maintainer.
- Davidz replied to the mail apologizing and saying he'd take care of it.
- Notting sends "never mind, david will take care of it" to the list.
- Davidz did nothing with the package.
- It was dropped.
- Within 48 hours of it being dropped, I received an email and several 
IRC pings wondering where it was (I own NetworkManager in core).  I'm 
sure Dan Williams did as well, maybe some other people.
- Also within 48 hours of it being dropped, Denis Leroy steps up to 
claim the package.

The most important things in that whole sequence are the last two. 
Clearly, dropping the package impacted Fedora users negatively.  And 
there was community interest in maintaining the package, so it's 
plausible that had it been given a fair process, it wouldn't have been 
dropped.

I believe the process for orphaning packages needs to address those.  I 
propose this:

1. Clearly after davidz replied to the first mail and the "request for 
new owners" was dropped, then proceeded to do nothing, ANOTHER request 
should have been initiated and allowed to go through to the end to allow 
  someone to have the chance to take the package before it was 
"orphaned".  This should be MANDATORY, in my opinion.

2. Packages should never be dropped when they are orphaned until they 
break.  Breaking can be defined as causing the tree to fail repoclosure, 
or somethin.  Debian does something similar to this.  The reasoning is 
that simply because the package is not "maintained" does not mean the 
package no longer serves a useful purpose to Fedora users.  Clearly that 
was the case for NetworkManager-vpnc.  It's possible that it will be 
*more* likely for someone to step up as maintainer if they realize there 
is a package they use and nobody to update the package (people seem very 
adamant about updated packages in extras).  Dropping packages carte 
blanche without at least some sort of individual review is plain wrong.