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Re: Evolving away from source package realms

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  Re: Evolving away from source package realms Gerardo Ballabio <gerardo.ballabio@gmail.com> - 2022-10-10 10:00 +0200
    Re: Evolving away from source package realms Scott Kitterman <debian@kitterman.com> - 2022-10-10 16:20 +0200

#12983 — Re: Evolving away from source package realms

Didier Raboud wrote:
> The last aspect would also be to completely remove the source-package-level
realms; within a subset, there would be no package-specific maintainers or
vetoes; disputes would move "out" from source-package-level to subset-level.

Uhm. This makes me wonder what the real goal of this proposal is.

Is it about restricting the ability of DDs to upload any package
(something that has never really caused any real issues so far as I'm
aware)? Or is it really about having a way to work around
uncollaborative maintainers of specific packages?

If it's the latter, I'm afraid it could have more negative effects
than positive. While "package-specific maintainership" does have its
problems, it is essentially what has been keeping Debian working until
now. People take care of their packages because, well, they're their
packages. If packages aren't assigned to maintainers anymore, I fear a
situation of "it's everybody's responsibility, therefore it's nobody's
responsibility".

There are in fact many team-maintained packages, and that's working
well, but it works because people *voluntarily* agreed to collective
maintainership, and those teams are usually rather small anyway, with
an even smaller number of people taking the lead. Those will still
have veto power.

Gerardo

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#12985

On October 10, 2022 7:56:07 AM UTC, Gerardo Ballabio <gerardo.ballabio@gmail.com> wrote:
>Didier Raboud wrote:
>> The last aspect would also be to completely remove the source-package-level
>realms; within a subset, there would be no package-specific maintainers or
>vetoes; disputes would move "out" from source-package-level to subset-level.
>
>Uhm. This makes me wonder what the real goal of this proposal is.
>
>Is it about restricting the ability of DDs to upload any package
>(something that has never really caused any real issues so far as I'm
>aware)? Or is it really about having a way to work around
>uncollaborative maintainers of specific packages?
>
>If it's the latter, I'm afraid it could have more negative effects
>than positive. While "package-specific maintainership" does have its
>problems, it is essentially what has been keeping Debian working until
>now. People take care of their packages because, well, they're their
>packages. If packages aren't assigned to maintainers anymore, I fear a
>situation of "it's everybody's responsibility, therefore it's nobody's
>responsibility".
>
>There are in fact many team-maintained packages, and that's working
>well, but it works because people *voluntarily* agreed to collective
>maintainership, and those teams are usually rather small anyway, with
>an even smaller number of people taking the lead. Those will still
>have veto power.

I think this is generally correct.  Ultimately, I think moving in the suggested direction will ultimately add bureaucracy and take away motivation.

Today, who decides a technical question is relatively straightforward.  In the first instance the maintainer (or maintainers + uploaders) decides and people who disagree have the option to escalate to the tech ctte.  If we do away with maintainers, everything will either be free for all revert wars or some other structure will be needed to make decisions.  I don't find the idea of doing the same work with additional mandatory bureaucracy at all appealing.

There are circumstances within the archive where having more structure makes sense and that's where teams have naturally formed.

I deal with more than enough process and procedure when I'm paid to put up with it.  Let's not further bureaucratize Debian.

Scott K

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