Co-maintainers to assist upstreams with their packages in Extras

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 14 Oct 2006 23:56:02 -0500, Jason L Tibbitts III wrote:

> It's an unfortunate fact that our sponsorship process makes things
> rather difficult for an upstream who would simply like to make their
> software available in Extras.  They don't want to submit multiple
> packages and they aren't generally interested in doing a lot of extra
> community work.  Some might say that if they're not interested in the
> community then they shouldn't be a maintainer (with all of the
> attendant access this brings), but I think that the gift of their
> software should count for something.  Frankly I think that we should
> encourage upstream software authors to become involved with Extras
> instead of letting the packages sit endlessly in the purgatory of the
> FE-NEW queue.
> 
> One proposed solution to this involves finding an existing Fedora
> package maintainer to co-maintain the package.  This gives the
> benefits of bringing together someone intimately familiar with the
> software and someone already familiar with Fedora policies and
> procedures.  I think it's a pretty good idea, but it does require that
> someone step up to co-maintain.
> 
> So, would anyone object to trying this out with a couple of packages?
> To start, is there anyone interested in co-maintaining libssa (A C++
> Object-Oriented network library)?
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=210187
> 
> You don't need to be a sponsor, just an existing maintainer.  I'll do
> the sponsorship bit once the package review is complete.

At least a little bit of strange timing.

As you probably have noticed, I've contributed a first review there just a
few days ago and haven't returned since then, because I don't process the
corresponding mail folder daily. I really don't mind if other
reviewers/sponsors finish off such package submissions without waiting for
me. That's one reason I haven't assigned this ticket to me before. I also
don't mind sponsoring new contributors without beating them to do reviews
or more than submitting 1-2 packages. Though, I'm also somewhat burnt by
fire'n'forget packagers.

With regard to the topic of "upstream package maintainers", it must be
distinguished between those, who show interest in offering good packages
(which are up to common packaging standards such as at Fedora Extras), and
those, who only hack a spec till it builds and seems to install. The
latter people should only manage to get something included in Fedora
Extras when there is somebody who assists them and who makes sure the most
common mistakes and pitfalls are avoided.