Hi Andreas, On 2024-02-27 09:05, Andreas Tille wrote: > 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.
I think moving DPT to Maintainers is a good idea. I think removing Uploaders is a terrible one. Some packages are complex, some packages have lots of reverse dependencies. Where these two circles overlap, a careless "drive-by" maintainer can do a lot of harm. Not going to name names, but I've seen this with packages I've worked on: I put a lot of effort into cleaning things up, making things robust, getting docs to build, tests to pass, collaborating with upstream, fixing reverse dependencies, and then someone spends a few minutes to upload a new version with total disregard for what the other maintainer(s) were doing. Things like "oh, documentation doesn't build anymore, I'll just disable it", rather than fixing it. Or "oh, these tests don't pass anymore, I'll just disable them", rather than looking into the regression. "Oh, my upload triggered a transition, I'm no longer interested in this". (This are all things that have happened to me.) All that stuff is then left for others to clean up. And if one is unlucky enough, this doesn't just cause work for the package, but for all reverse dependencies. So while I absolutely condemn the conduct that you describe, I do also have to condemn this careless drive-by work, because it is also extremely demotivating. I see Uploaders as a signal of "these are the regular maintainers, I should check with these people before doing any *major* changes". And I argue that this is reasonable. Best, Christian
