nonresponsive maintainer policy

[James Findley]

On 08/02/2010 01:41 PM, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Mon, 02 Aug 2010 12:31:22 +0100, James wrote:
>
>> Remember that some packages get very little activity because they need
>> very little.
>
> And these are not a problem at all.
>
>> Increasing someone's AWOLness counter because they didn't for example,
>> update ed is just plain silly.
>
> [snipped the rest here]
>
> Uh, come on, ... that's not helpful. There are ideas how to detect absent
> maintainers early by collecting and *combining* information available in
> the Fedora intrastructure. Not by having a single old stable pkg trigger
> an AWOL alarm.
> [snip]


Really?  So imagine this scenario.

Packager foo has two packages, bar and baz.
bar is a package much like ed, which needs very little attention, and 
goes for a year without anything needing doing to it, no koji activity 
happens.  This increases the hidden little "AWOLness" counter.

foo then goes on holiday for a week, and forgets to mention this on his 
fp.o page.
A bug is found in package baz.  Bug reports are filed - users are 
impatient.  It's noticed that foo has a very high AWOLness counter due 
to foo's other package.
He is surprised to learn that he's been declared AWOL and had his 
packages removed when he returns from holiday.

As I read the initial proposal, this is entirely plausible.