Announcing the release of Fedora 15 Beta!!

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:26:40 +0200, KK wrote:

> > Arbitrary provenpackagers spending time on rebuilding semi-orphaned
> > packages (or even incorrectly retired packages) isn't helpful.
> 
> Actually, IMHO it is.

Will you resurrect the packages when their package maintainer retires
them after F-15 gold despite of you having fixed them to build?

Do you take over packages where it is discovered that they are unmaintained
in Fedora for a long time?

Your answer won't be an unconditional "yes" to either question.

Will you respond to incoming problem reports that would be assigned
to orphan-owner only?

> We should work together as a community 

We do, we do!  Still we want to have at least one dedicated person take
care of a package including bug reports. We want to distribute the load
and scale, not create a growing pile we cannot handle. I've used the
provenpackagers powers before, too, but still I'd like to _work together_
with other people, and as a requirement I'd like to see that the other
people as busy with other packagers or at least are still around instead
of having left the Fedora Project silently.

> and get rid of 
> this idea that packages are owned by one person (or a short list of people) 
> and nobody else is responsible for them.

Nobody, not nobody else. The problem is when "nobody" seems to be responsible,
not even the guys who are on the list of a package's maintainers.

I think what you call responsibility is something different. If you have a
spare hour, you'd like to jump in and touch arbitrary packages in
arbitrary ways. Not limited to Rawhide. You don't take responsibility for
the package in bugzilla. Not for existing tickets and not for future ones
either. And you don't care to find out why "nobody" has applied a fix
faster than you. It's not even likely that you will be available next
time the same package needs another fix or rebuild, if its maintainer is
still absent.

> If something is broken in Fedora, 
> we should work together to fix it. 

If there is nobody left to maintain a package, you cannot work together
with anyone. It would be a one-man show. How many packages do you really
feel responsible for? Does that include packages you don't even use?

> Rebuilds to fix broken dependencies 
> (possibly with patches to fix FTBFS issues) are an easy way to help making 
> Fedora as a whole better.

Don't generalize. I refer to the scenario where weeks or months pass
without a package "owner" doing basic package maintenance and without
asking for help. There are various examples, and I've looked up one
for you:

  https://bugzilla.redhat.com/460557

> I think it is of value to Fedora to ship as much (useful and properly 
> licensed) software as possible.

_Working_ software. With the Fedora Packager handling incoming problem
reports, because the problems may be specific to Fedora.

> That software is clearly useful to somebody 
> or it wouldn't have been packaged in the first place.

"Somebody" could be just the package submitter. And if that person isn't
active anymore (sometimes without prior announcement), who else is left?