Dear Fesco: Orphan package process needs work

[Christopher Aillon]

Michael Schwendt wrote:
> 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.

Are we going to expect this of every single contributor?  Please ignore 
the fact that he worked at Red Hat here, I'm talking in a more broad sense.


> 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.

Agreed.  Penalizing users of the software because the maintainer makes 
empty promises is just plain wrong.  Action was indeed needed on 
someone's part for the package.  We should have found someone to perform 
the action if the maintainer was making empty promises, rather than just 
nix the package.


> 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.

Great.  That process is nice.  It works.  What I'm talking about and 
what doesn't work is that when a package maintainer is pinged and given 
notice that "Hi.  You need to do this.  Will you?  If not, I will find 
someone else" and then proceeds to agree to do work, stifling the 
correct process of finding a new owner.  He stopped that process from 
happening by promising to do work.  And then failed to do work.

I'm arguing that *in all cases* there should be an attempt to find a new 
owner for the package the instant it is deemed the maintainer isn't 
doing their job for the package.  There was none in this case because 
the owner stifled that.