On Fri, Jun 05, 2026 at 02:30:35PM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
I'd like to propose some procedure for packages that appear to lack active maintenance, but where no formal orphaning has taken place. Lets have a look for instance at clucene-core:
[...]
One possible solution to consider would be to move the package to Debian Commons maintenance,
I still think that formally orphaning unmaintained but not formally orphaned packages is the best thing (when they can't/shouldn't be RMed) because it's the only thing that explicitly marks a package as orphaned, i.e. that nobody cares about it. Shoving them into Debian Commons is not better than shoving them into random teams as was done before: it still hides their status, adds some busywork and prevents them from being formally orphaned for some more years.
This example should simply give some evidence that we might need some solution which does not block contributors to invest some time into packages. While another NMU would address the immediate issue, it would not improve the long-term maintenance situation of the package.
*cough* I mean...
Debian already has contributors willing to maintain such packages. The question is how we can provide a clear and scalable path for those contributors to assume ongoing responsibility when traditional single-maintainer maintenance has effectively become inactive.
Don't we have a mechanism where a specific really existing person can become a maintainer of an unmaintained but not formally orphaned package directly?
-- WBR, wRAR
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