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Groups > linux.debian.maint.python > #15496

Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy

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On Tue, 27 Feb 2024, Thomas Goirand wrote:

> On 2/27/24 09:05, Andreas Tille wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I became more deeply involved into DPT since 2022 as a consequence of
>> the suggestion for transfering several Debian Med/Science packages to
>> DPMT[1][2].  I happily followed this suggestion and moved >30 packages
>> from the Blends teams to DPT.  I was happy with this move since it makes
>> sense.
>> 
>> Recently we received lots of testing removal warnings in those Blends
>> teams due to RC bugs caused by Cython 3.0 and Python3.12 migrations.  So
>> I did what I usually do in those teams:  I dedicated quite some time in
>> team wide bug hunting.  That way I squashed about 50 bugs on packages
>> where I was not in Uploaders.  When doing so I usually run
>> routine-update on the package which basically streamlines packaging to
>> latest standards including calling Janitor tools which are so far
>> accepted inside DPT.
>> 
>> I probably should have reviewed the DPT policy on Maintainership[3] more
>> carefully. In other teams, it's common for the Maintainer to be set to
>> the team, so I assumed it was just an oversight when I made this
>> change[4] when touching the package to fix RC bug #1058177.  However, I
>> I was pointed immediately about the fact that I was mistaken according
>> to the current DPT policy.  I apologize for this.  However, the wording
>> of the comment on my commit was discouraging, especially considering I
>> was a volunteer who had fixed a critical bug.  Because of this, I
>> decided to focus my efforts on fixing other critical bugs for the
>> moment.  If the comment had started with a 'Thanks for fixing the
>> critical bug, but...' I likely would have corrected my mistake quickly.
>> The lack of respect from my teammate simply made me prioritize my time
>> on other issues that are more visible to our users.  I wonder whether I
>> should propose another change to the policy about maintaining a kind and
>> polite language inside the team - but that's a different thing.
>> 
>> While I applied the patch for another RC bug (#1063443) after >2 weeks
>> which triggered a RC bug in reportbug I remembered the "keep the
>> maintainer" policy.  But I kept on doing Janitor like changes since
>> finally the package is maintained in a team where Janitor is accepted.
>> When doing so I failed the phrase "please contact the Maintainer for the
>> green light."  I apoligize for this again.  The response was another
>> volunteer-demotivating private mail (thus no quote) which also was
>> lacking the "Thanks for fixing"-phrase and degrading my changes as
>> "frivolous".
>> 
>> So far what happened (seen from my possibly biased perspective).
>> 
>> Why do I like to change the policy?
>> 
>> The current wording provides some means to stop volunteer team members
>> helping out moving forward to speed up migrations and fix Debian wide
>> dependencies.  It hides team maintained packages from a common BTS
>> view.  When pointing my browser to
>>      https://bugs.debian.org/team+python@tracker.debian.org
>> I currently see 1339 open bugs (calculated by [UDD1]).  This hides
>> another 309 [UDD2] bugs (>18% of team bugs) from our sight.  To work
>> around this flaw I used an UDD query to find relevant Python3.12 bugs.
>> 
>> When I think twice about the wording
>>     Team in Uploaders is a weak statement of collaboration.[3]
>> I personally consider it a statement of *no* collaboration (which fits
>> the wording of the responses I've got).
>> 
>> How can a team member for instance find another RC bug #1009424?  Just
>> from reading the bug report it is pretty easy to fix but does not
>> feature any response in BTS.  I came across this while looking into
>> Cython 3.0 bugs.  The same source package (basemap) that had the open
>> Cython bug (#1056789, tagged patch since 2023-12-09) is featuring RC bug
>> (#1009424) that stayed unattended for 22 months?  We all know volunteers
>> have limited time and I do not want to blame anybody in the team to not
>> care promptly about RC bugs.  But what else is the sense of a packaging
>> team than stepping in situations for long standing RC bugs and RC bugs
>> tagged patch?
>> 
>> This kind of situation wouldn't occur in teams where collaboration is
>> strong and communication is effective. My motivation to address these
>> long-ignored critical bugs diminishes when the maintainer opts for
>> "weak" cooperation and lacks respectful communication with potential
>> helpers.  I see no difference to simply do a NMU.
>> 
>> I've checked the current situation who is actually using the DPT team as
>> Uploaders[UDD3].  66 of the 73 maintainers have less than 5 packages
>> some of these "Maintainers" are other teams and lots of the persons
>> listed as Maintainer are known to be MIA.  This means the packages are
>> de-facto not maintained which is most probably an unwanted effect of the
>> current policy.  I know other maintainers from other teams to be fine
>> with stronger team understanding.
>> 
>> Since I consider the current situation as demotivating for newcomers
>> as well as long standing contributors I would like to suggest to drop
>> this "weak statement of collaboration" option from policy.  I've attached
>> an according patch to the team policy[5].  I'm fine with creating a MR
>> to be discussed rather in Salsa than this mailing list - whatever seems
>> worthwhile to you.
>> 
>> Kind regards
>>      Andreas.
>
> Hi Andreas,
>
> I had similar experience, and the same kind of demotivating response from the 
> same person. So I'm not surprised.
>
> It's been a long long time that I would have like this DPT policy to go away, 
> but didn't dare to raise the topic. Though indeed, I don't think it's 
> reasonable to have a package in the team, but with strong ownership. I 
> believe that we should either have a package in the team, or not. Period.
>
> If someone isn't happy about this policy change, it's ok to move the package 
> way from the team, if having team-mate working on "your" package isn't ok (of 
> course, we would all prefer this doesn't happen, and that we work 
> collaboratively). This would make things a way clearer.
>
> So I'm 100% with you for the removal of this policy.
>
> To everyone else in the team: please also state your opinion, so we can make 
> a collective decision.

I agree with both of you.  I think packages should be team maintained or 
not at all.  No middle area.

Regards,
Scott

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Thread

Suggesting change in DPT policy Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-02-27 09:10 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Scott Talbert <swt@techie.net> - 2024-02-27 15:30 +0100
    Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> - 2024-02-27 19:40 +0100
      Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> - 2024-02-28 01:00 +0100
        Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-02-28 08:10 +0100
          Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> - 2024-02-28 12:50 +0100
            Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-02-28 15:40 +0100
        Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> - 2024-02-28 13:00 +0100
      Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Jeroen Ploemen <jcfp@debian.org> - 2024-02-29 20:50 +0100
        Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Julian Gilbey <julian@d-and-j.net> - 2024-03-01 08:30 +0100
          Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Jeroen Ploemen <jcfp@debian.org> - 2024-03-01 13:10 +0100
            Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Andreas Tille <tille@debian.org> - 2024-03-02 21:40 +0100
              Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> - 2024-03-02 22:20 +0100
                Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-03-02 23:20 +0100
                Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-03-03 07:20 +0100
                Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> - 2024-03-03 18:20 +0100
  +1 (Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy) Jochen Sprickerhof <jspricke@debian.org> - 2024-02-27 15:40 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Timo Röhling <roehling@debian.org> - 2024-02-27 16:10 +0100
    Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-02-28 08:20 +0100
      Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Étienne Mollier <emollier@debian.org> - 2024-02-28 09:40 +0100
        Maintaining packages with complex relationships (Was: Suggesting  change in DPT policy) Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-02-28 12:00 +0100
          Re: Maintaining packages with complex relationships (Was: Suggesting  change in DPT policy) Timo Röhling <roehling@debian.org> - 2024-02-28 16:50 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Martin <debacle@debian.org> - 2024-02-27 16:40 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy weepingclown <weepingclown@disroot.org> - 2024-02-27 17:30 +0100
    Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-02-28 09:10 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Arto Jantunen <viiru@debian.org> - 2024-02-27 21:30 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Louis-Philippe Véronneau <pollo@debian.org> - 2024-02-27 21:40 +0100
    Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-02-28 09:30 +0100
      Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> - 2024-02-28 15:30 +0100
        Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-02-28 15:50 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Stefano Rivera <stefanor@debian.org> - 2024-02-28 03:00 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Agathe Porte <gagath@debian.org> - 2024-02-28 10:30 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Julian Gilbey <julian@d-and-j.net> - 2024-02-28 11:50 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Salvo Tomaselli <tiposchi@tiscali.it> - 2024-03-01 01:20 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Stefano Rivera <stefanor@debian.org> - 2024-03-03 00:10 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Emmanuel Arias <eamanu@yaerobi.com> - 2024-03-03 00:40 +0100
    Re: Suggesting change in DPT policy Alexandre Detiste <alexandre.detiste@gmail.com> - 2024-03-03 16:20 +0100
  Re: Suggesting change in DPT Policy Nilesh Patra <nilesh@debian.org> - 2024-03-09 18:00 +0100
    Re: Suggesting change in DPT Policy Anton Gladky <gladk@debian.org> - 2024-03-09 18:50 +0100
      Re: Suggesting change in DPT Policy Julian Gilbey <julian@d-and-j.net> - 2024-03-09 22:30 +0100
        Re: Suggesting change in DPT Policy Andreas Tille <andreas@an3as.eu> - 2024-03-19 08:40 +0100

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