What happens when a packager goes dark?

[Benjamin Lefoul]

Hi,

So this packager  Bernard Johnson (bjohnson) disappeared and his email
(bjohnson(a)symetrix.com) is dead.
"Symetrix.com" is unmaintained and the company listed in the whois
"Symetrix Consulting" is nowhere to be found in the US (where bjohnson says
he's located in FAS).
The company behind "symetrixconsulting.com" seems unrelated and located in
India. The company behind "symetrix.co" told me they have no employee by that
name.

So what happens in this case?

I am interested in taking over the BackupPC package which needs a simple fix in EPEL7 (no
one upstream seems to care about the Fedora packaging, but my company needs it). I would
need a sponsor too.

But again: what happens when a packager goes dark before orphaning or retiring her
packages? Has this been seriously discussed? What if they get seriously ill or worse (the
Fedora project is now sufficiently big and old that statistically, this could happen)?

Regards,

Benjamin Lefoul
FAS: lef

[Tom Hughes]

On 02/06/16 08:41, Benjamin Lefoul wrote:

>  But again: what happens when a packager goes dark before orphaning or
> retiring her packages? Has this been seriously discussed? What if they get seriously ill
> or worse (the Fedora project is now sufficiently big and old that statistically, this
> could happen)? 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Policy_for_nonresponsive_package_maintainers

Tom

-- 
Tom Hughes (tom(a)compton.nu)
http://compton.nu/

[Dan Horák]

On Thu, 2 Jun 2016 07:41:31 +0000
Benjamin Lefoul <benjamin.lefoul(a)nwise.se&gt; wrote:

>  Hi,
>  
>  So this packager  Bernard Johnson (bjohnson) disappeared and his
>  email (bjohnson(a)symetrix.com) is dead. "Symetrix.com" is unmaintained
>  and the company listed in the whois "Symetrix Consulting" is nowhere
>  to be found in the US (where bjohnson says he's located in FAS). The
>  company behind "symetrixconsulting.com" seems unrelated and located
>  in India. The company behind "symetrix.co" told me they have no
>  employee by that name.
>  
>  So what happens in this case?
>  
>  I am interested in taking over the BackupPC package which needs a
>  simple fix in EPEL7 (no one upstream seems to care about the Fedora
>  packaging, but my company needs it). I would need a sponsor too.
>  
>  But again: what happens when a packager goes dark before orphaning or
>  retiring her packages? Has this been seriously discussed? What if
>  they get seriously ill or worse (the Fedora project is now
>  sufficiently big and old that statistically, this could happen)? 
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Policy_for_nonresponsive_package_maintainers


		Dan

[Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski]

Hello, Benjamin.

On Thursday, 02 June 2016 at 09:41, Benjamin Lefoul wrote:
>  Hi,
>  
>  So this packager  Bernard Johnson (bjohnson) disappeared and his email
>  (bjohnson(a)symetrix.com) is dead. 
[...]

>  I am interested in taking over the BackupPC package which needs a
> simple
>  fix in EPEL7 (no one upstream seems to care about the Fedora packaging,
>  but my company needs it). I would need a sponsor too. 
That is one of the best reasons to become the maintainer of a package.
I'd suggest reading up on how to become Fedora packager:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_get_sponsored_into_the_packager_group

>  But again: what happens when a packager goes dark before orphaning
> or
>  retiring her packages? Has this been seriously discussed? What if they
>  get seriously ill or worse (the Fedora project is now sufficiently big
>  and old that statistically, this could happen)? 
We have this policy in place:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Policy_for_nonresponsive_package_maintainers

Regards,
Dominik
-- 
Fedora http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Rathann
RPMFusion http://rpmfusion.org
"Faith manages."
        -- Delenn to Lennier in Babylon 5:"Confessions and Lamentations"