Hi,
On Thu, Aug 03, 2017 at 06:48:27PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> Adrian Bunk <b...@debian.org> writes:
> > Your definition is completely detached from the reality in Debian.
>
> > Many (likely the majority) of teams in Debian have not more than 1
> > active member.
>From my teamstatistics point of view[1] I can confirm that we have some
one person teams but that is not the majority of the teams who are
taking part of the statistics. The last phrase of the previous sentence
is important since the statistics are calculated *at request* of a team
member and there might be a good chance that one-person teams do not
really care about this statistics and so the impression I have is quite
biased by this fact.
> Then when that one member disappears, that team becomes MIA, which is
> something that would need to be detected by an MIA process for teams,
> which I agree should exist, but which I think is detectable via other
> mechanisms than Uploaders.
+1
> One approach as Holger points out: look for
> packages where all the recent uploads have been by the MIA member, which
> doesn't require the Uploaders field at all.
>
> I stand by my statement that as long as the team *does* have more than one
> member, not having to change anything abot package maintenance when one
> team member disappears is kind of the whole point of having team
> maintenance. If the team is not providing that, it feels like there's not
> much point in having a team, although I guess it could be aspirational.
I very much agree and I go further here. Teams should watch out
actively for packages that would fit into the team and inviting the
maintainer of those packages actively or team-hijack orphaned packages
that are fitting. I'm doing this for years in Debian Med and Debian
Science (to some extend in Debian GIS and DebiChem) and the effect was
in all cases positive for the package. (In very few cases I was blamed
about team hijacks by third persons who were not involved, never by the
maintainer of the package.)
I'm deeply convinced that this kind of actively team forming is serving
our users by enabling better chances to keep packages up to date which
are either maintainer-orphaned or even team-orphaned.
> > When all members of a team are confirmed to be MIA/retired, this should
> > result in an orphaning of all packages maintained by the team.
>
> One of the whole points of this discussion is that this "members of a
> team" concept is not well-defined in Debian and is probably not something
> that we *can* make well-defined in Debian. Or, more to the point, *want*
> to make well-defined.
In the teams I'm working in becoming a team member is as easy as adding
your name to Uploaders (non-DDs need to ask to be added to the team on
Alioth, ACLs are set for DDs). I think this is the most inviting method
and I would vote for this if we find some agreement.
> > This would create both longer bitrot for packages and more work for
> > an already overworked team.
>
> Why? I don't see how this follows; in fact, I believe the exact opposite.
> The current work that the MIA team does to track down Uploaders that
> mention MIA people on team-maintained packages and file a bunch of bugs to
> have them removed is work that they *don't* have to do in this model.
> Instead, just treat the team like another maintainer and look at whether
> that maintainer's packages are being maintained and whether that team is
> active and orphan packages if they aren't.
+1
Kind regards
Andreas.
[1] http://blends.debian.net/liststats/
--
http://fam-tille.de
