On Mon, Sep 17, 2012 at 5:02 AM, Peter Stuge <pe...@stuge.se> wrote: > Ben de Groot wrote: >> >> > I kinda like jabberd. >> >> >> >> So step up and take on maintainership of that package. >> > >> > I would have, had I been a developer. >> >> You don't have to be a developer: >> http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/qa/proxy-maintainers/ > > And still be dependent on someone else? > > No, that's not the reason I use Gentoo. >
Well, as a user there are only two ways to get or keep your favorite package in the tree: 1. Get a developer to maintain it. 2. Get a proxy-maintainer to maintain it. That's it. Whether you pay them, beg, appeal to their God, or whatever, if you don't do one or the other your package will get pruned eventually. If your favorite package isn't in the tree you can: 1. Keep your own ebuild in /usr/local/portage or whatever. 2. Publish your own overlay. 3. Use somebody else's overlay. 3a. Use sunrise. You're never forced to stay in-tree, though you'll find that your life might be easier if you do (more eyeballs, if somebody renames a dep or does something big to the tree they'll fix your ebuild for you, etc). I don't think there is any realistic alternative. Our users expect packages in the tree to meet basic QA standards, which requires maintainers. Other distros use similar approaches - in fact it seems like if anything Gentoo keeps quite a bit of stuff in the main tree that many other distros push out into their equivalents of overlays. Rich
