Automating the NonResponsiveMaintainers policy

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Fri, Mar 02, 2012 at 13:55:11 +0000,
  "\"Jóhann B. Guðmundsson\"" <johannbg at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not a packager already nor can I become one since I dont want to
> maintain a single package in the distribution since "it does not
> scratch my ich" but I would like to be able to fix things if I do
> come across them at least with regards to spec files changes.
> ( There is atleast one feature ( systemd preset ) on the horizon
> that might require spec file changes and that in turn means spec
> file changes for the equal amount packages that are daemon/services
> in the distribution and somebody will have to do that work )

That's going to be difficult. Essentially you are asking to jump from
non-packager directly to proven packager.

What you you could do is post patches needed to do your suggested updates
in bugzilla for packagers to apply. In theory this process should
work well, as the packages just need to review what you did and then
apply it rather than doing a lot of background study on systemd before
being able to write their own patches to do the same thing.

> But as things are now I cant become a proven packager since I'm not
> already an packager and I never will become a packager since I dont
> want to be maintaining a package in the distribution so really there
> is no place for people like me that want to fix things without
> having to maintaining an package in the distribution first...

Well 'never' may be a bit extreme. I think there is a place for people like
this (specialist in some area that works with that specialty on a lot of
packages). But figuring out how to demonstrate that expertise and general
judgement will take some work. It may not be worth doing this if the
specialty is really only needed for a transition and wouldn't really
be used much after the transition was complete.