[Utnubu-discuss] Utnubu and collaborative maintenance with Ubuntu MOTU

[Raphael Hertzog]

Hi Stephan,

On Mon, 16 Jan 2006, Stephan Hermann wrote:
> > The maintainer field in the package should be either the name of someone
> > that would like to maintain the package or a mailing list to be defined
> > by the MOTU team which created the package. Stefan ? Rheinhard ?
> 
> I have a question:
> 
> 1. Is this discussed with the MOTU hopefuls or MOTUs who are/were contributing 
> to Ubuntu, if they want that?

Right now, we don't pull packages out of Ubuntu, it's Stefan and Rheinhard
pushing them into the SVN... and they decided who to put in the Maintainer
field with appropriate care.

In the future, if we start pulling packages out of Ubuntu directly, we'll
of course contact the person listed as "Maintainer" in your package and
check with her/him if he wants to help and if not, we'll change the
maintainer field to whatever we want.

So the generic answer is: whoever integrates the package in the SVN is
responsible to fill the Maintainer field by checking with the various
parties involved.

> E.g. I don't mind, if someone takes over my package and will push it into 
> Debian. Well, if it has to be, he/she (the new package maintainer) have to 
> put his name into the Maintainer field. Because then, the debian package will 
> be our upstream, and I don't have any work anymore for taking care about 
> it :)

You're telling: I care enough about the package to maintain it in Ubuntu
but I don't care enough to help maintain it inside Debian. The actual result
may be that the package doesn't get integrated into Debian and you keep
the work of maintaining it but Debian doesn't benefit from your work. Both
sides loose. :-|

Doing it once for both distributions is the sensible course of action.

> 2. I don't think it's a good idea to put the "MOTU Team" as maintainer of 
> those packages, because we aren't the maintainer. There is someone who 
> created the package, but if he/she doesn't want to take care about the 
> package anymore, doesn't matter if it's in ubuntu or debian, and there are no  
> or one installation(s) of this package, we should think about removing them 
> from the archives (regarding universe).

This is in contradiction with your current practice, no ?

> It's right, MOTUs are fixing/changing the packages anyways, but maintaining, 
> no, (maintaining in the sense of debian, and yes there are some 
> exceptions :)). 

MOTU are fixing bugs in packages, they are uploading new upstream
versions, they are maintaining some packages... event when they're not
explicitely listed in the maintainer field. 

Maybe you need to create a specific list for the purpose of acting as
maintainer for packages that are reintegrated into Debian. Or maybe this
list should be created on the Utnubu side ...

> Only the creator of the package can allow the integration of the package into 
> this SVN. We should respect that.

Of course. But I doubt that the creator of the package has something
against using his work ... otherwise he shouldn't do free software. :-))

Cheers,
-- 
Raphaël Hertzog

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