Russ Allbery <r...@debian.org> writes:
> Hm, but actually, isn't the magic of "should" appropriate here? If a
> package is unmaintained but not orphaned, that *is* a bug, which is what
> "should" means. Admittedly, Policy normally only governs the contents
> of packages and not procedural issues in Debian like orphaning, but this
> sort of straddles the boundary.
After having thought about this over the weekend, I think "should" is
appropriate here and am leaning towards going ahead with the patch using
that wording to avoid the passive construct that could imply packages will
somehow magically orphan themselves.
I think we all agree that it is the responsibility and duty of maintainers
who can no longer take care of a package to orphan it. That's a standard
part of Debian procedures. I also think that we all would agree that
packages whose current maintainers can't take care of them for whatever
reason but which are not orphaned are buggy, in the sense that something
needs to be done to the package to bring it into compliance with our
procedures (orphan it or at least put it up for adoption).
So, the question here is not really about whether or not "should" is
appropriate but whether Policy is the right place to say "should" about
this since it's a procedural issue more than a package content issue.
Having some tendencies towards being a rules purist myself, I'm
sympathetic to that argument, but the more I thought about this, the more
I feel like clarity here is more important than maintaining a strict
separation of powers between Policy and other documents.
Charles and Steve, you're the two who objected to or were avoiding the
"should" language. Does this persuade you?
For reference, here is the relevant portion of the proposed patch.
<p>
- If the maintainer of a package quits from the Debian
- project, "Debian QA Group"
- <email>packa...@qa.debian.org</email> takes over the
- maintainer-ship of the package until someone else
- volunteers for that task. These packages are called
- <em>orphaned packages</em>.<footnote>
- The detailed procedure for doing this gracefully can
- be found in the Debian Developer's Reference,
- see <ref id="related">.
- </footnote>
+ If the maintainer of a package no longer has time or desire to
+ maintain a package, it should be orphaned according to the
+ procedure described in the Debian Developer's Reference
+ (see <ref id="related">). The maintainer then
+ becomes <tt>Debian QA Group <packa...@qa.debian.org></tt>.
+ These packages are considered maintained by the Debian project
+ as a whole until someone else volunteers to take over
+ maintenance.
</p>
--
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org) <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>
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