Hi Paul, Am Sat, Jun 06, 2026 at 11:06:40AM +0200 schrieb Paul Gevers: > [No need to CC me, I already get this 3 times]
Reduced the CC to relevant bugs + Maintainer + Uploader.
> On 6/5/26 22:15, Andreas Tille wrote:
> > This is exactly the gap I am trying to discuss. If we believes that such
> > packages should become formally orphaned rather than move to Debian
> > Commons, what is the practical path to achieve that?
>
> In my opinion, if you want to maintain it in Debian Commons, you are
> salvaging the package and should use the salvation process. Debian Commons
> is intended to declare weak ownership, which is something else than no
> ownership. If you are willing to stick your name to a package in uploaders
> at least, ITS should work for you already. If you don't, than Debian Commons
> shouldn't be part of your solution.
OK, you do not consider Debian Commons part of the solution, and I can
understand the argument that Debian Commons should only be used when at
least one person explicitly wants to take ongoing responsibility for the
package.
My reading of the current thread is that several people agree that
clucene-core appears to lack active maintenance, while there is less
agreement about the appropriate process to handle such packages. Since
the package does not seem to fit the usual MIA workflow, perhaps we
should discuss what criteria and procedure would be appropriate for
formal orphaning in such cases.
To solve this we need criteria for packages for which a formal orphaning
process may be initiated by a contributor and concluded by a QA upload.
I'd suggest the following criteria:
Mandatory criteria
------------------
* No maintainer upload for at least 5 years.
* At least two documented contact attempts over a period of at least 6
months with no response from the maintainer
* At least one non-trivial NMU has been required since the last
maintainer upload (no mass transitions and similar archive-wide
changes)
* No indication from the maintainer that they still intend to maintain
the package
* A contributor is willing to prepare the QA upload and document the
evidence.
Other indicators
----------------
These are not required but strengthen the case:
* Repeated (non-mass) NMUs
* RC bugs remaining unfixed for an extended period
* Patches pending without maintainer response
* Uploader(s) also unresponsive
If a package fulfills these criteria, I suggest the following process:
1. File an Intent to Orphan bug documenting why the package satisfies
the mandatory criteria.
2. Make sure to CC Maintainer and Uploaders when filing the bug.
3. Wait 21 days.
4. Upload to DELAYED/15 *and* CC debian-devel list when informing
Maintainer and Uploaders about the upload.
5. Any response from the Maintainer or member of the Uploaders list
indicating continued interest in the package immediately stops the
process. Substantial objections raised on debian-devel should also
result in cancellation of the upload until those objections have
been addressed.
(Motivation for DELAYED/15 is that there might be additional input
from debian-devel with good reasons to cancel the upload.)
The intent is not to replace the MIA process, but to provide a path for
cases where contributors believe a package lacks active maintenance and
no MIA process has been initiated.
If there appears to be support for such a procedure, I will file an MR
against developers-reference to document it.
Kind regards
Andreas.
--
https://fam-tille.de
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