This is a request for comment and perhaps an informal proposal for how
to handle packages with AWOL owners.
I have spent sometime discussing this process with a work college, a
debian developer, on how best practice and the appropriate etiquette
could be shown to the current owner of a said package. He suggested that
debian's NMU or Non-Maintainer Upload, processed worked well within the
debian development community.
I have read through this policy of debian's and think that it addresses
the issues nicely of ensuring that packages are not left to become stale
and not offend packager owners.
I am proposing we (Fedora Extras) adopt the same process. It would need
to be made Fedora relevant and I would hope that people will see the
plus in such a process.
The over all aim is to avoid "stale" packages in Extras, more swiftly
pick up on unmaintained packages and hopefully encourage people to work
on these packages by providing a process in which people can fix them.
An example would be:
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-extras-list/2006-April/msg01763.html
This also allows people to demonstrate that they have a willingness to
maintain a package and are capable of doing so.
You can review debian's process here:
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/developers-reference/ch-pkgs.en.html#s-nmu
Some items that would need clarifying, would be the time needed to be
considered "reasonable" in the time of contact and delay. Also, there
would need to be persons responsible for "approving" the take over of a
package.
Please note, this is not to address or replace the orphan process, but
to help in cases where the package has not been orphaned and the
maintainer is not contactable.
If a process like this is received well, then I am happy to draft it for
FESCo to ponder.
Regards
Michael
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