Adrian Bunk <b...@debian.org> writes:
> On Thu, Aug 03, 2017 at 05:41:00PM -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
>> Adrian Bunk <b...@debian.org> writes:

>>> Regressing on being able to orphan all packages of a known-MIA/retired
>>> maintainer would be very bad.

>> I agree, but that's not directly relevant here, since we're talking
>> about team-maintained packages.  The whole *point* of team maintenance
>> is that there's no reason to orphan a package just because one team
>> member went away.  If that weren't the case, the package is, *by
>> definition*, not team-maintained (or the team itself is MIA, which is a
>> different issue as discussed below).

> Your definition is completely detached from the reality in Debian.

> Many (likely the majority) of teams in Debian have not more than 1
> active member.

Then when that one member disappears, that team becomes MIA, which is
something that would need to be detected by an MIA process for teams,
which I agree should exist, but which I think is detectable via other
mechanisms than Uploaders.  One approach as Holger points out: look for
packages where all the recent uploads have been by the MIA member, which
doesn't require the Uploaders field at all.

I stand by my statement that as long as the team *does* have more than one
member, not having to change anything abot package maintenance when one
team member disappears is kind of the whole point of having team
maintenance.  If the team is not providing that, it feels like there's not
much point in having a team, although I guess it could be aspirational.

> When all members of a team are confirmed to be MIA/retired, this should
> result in an orphaning of all packages maintained by the team.

One of the whole points of this discussion is that this "members of a
team" concept is not well-defined in Debian and is probably not something
that we *can* make well-defined in Debian.  Or, more to the point, *want*
to make well-defined.

>> No, I'm not -- as I pointed out in a separate message, this is a
>> problem worth solving, but this is an MIA team problem that I think is
>> best tackled from that angle.  If all of a team's packages are
>> bitrotting, then the team's packages should be orphaned just like we do
>> with an MIA single maintainer.

> This would create both longer bitrot for packages and more work for
> an already overworked team.

Why?  I don't see how this follows; in fact, I believe the exact opposite.
The current work that the MIA team does to track down Uploaders that
mention MIA people on team-maintained packages and file a bunch of bugs to
have them removed is work that they *don't* have to do in this model.
Instead, just treat the team like another maintainer and look at whether
that maintainer's packages are being maintained and whether that team is
active and orphan packages if they aren't.

-- 
Russ Allbery (r...@debian.org)               <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>

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