Scott Kitterman <deb...@kitterman.com> writes:
> On Monday, December 12, 2016 01:16:49 PM Ian Jackson wrote:
>> Scott Kitterman writes ("Re: Formal declaration of weak package ownership in
> source packages (was: Replace the TC power to depose maintainers)"):
>> > If anyone can unilaterally add themselves as maintainer (to pick one
>> > proposal as an example) and make intrusive package changes (since
>> > they are a maintainer), there's really no maintainer at all.
>>
>> I was suggesting this only for the situtation where there is only one
>> maintainer.
>
> I know, but once it's one, then it will be two, because reasons.
>
>> > I do sense a general trend of the conversation towards the idea of
>> > undermining package maintainership. Push to hard in that direction
>> > and you get revert wars and even larger chunks of the archive left
>> > to rot.
>>
>> I think we have a problem that a few maintainers are unresponsive to
>> external corrective input, or uncommunicative (except to block). I
>> don't think our systems for dealing with such situations are any good.
>> It mostly seems to involve having a conversation (necessarily) full of
>> personal attacks, on the TC list.
>
> I agree the current system isn't working, but I think if you optimize for
> these relatively rare hard cases, you'll do more harm than good.I have to agree: my thought on this was that hard cases make bad law. The thing that comes to mind from my experience would be the request to enable ssh -c none (which turns off crypto, giving better speed in exchange for exposing private key material to the net, and only meant for testing). Some people were _very_ keen on this idea indeed. The related bug (#13389) doesn't really give the full impression. Of course times are quite different, and it would be a very brave person who would now try to unilaterally join debian-ssh and upload a patched package, but I imagine there are other security sensitive packages being quietly and carefully maintained by someone that doesn't realise that they're giving a public impression of inactivity. > In line with some other recent comments (I think on this list, I lose track), > I think if the TC were a bit more aggressive about requiring people with > issues they want the TC to address to put them in neutral technical terms > (the U.S. legal parallel would be roughly case dismissed for failure to make > a > justiciable claim [1]) before they will consider them, the existing process > could work in a less painful way. Until now I've tended to be irritated by the way courts do that, but suddenly I have more of an understanding of why they do ;-) Having someone that is familiar with court processes on the TC might help. I don't know if any of the current batch have a legal background. I wonder how long it would be before people start acting as advocates to guide others though our increasingly arcane rules -- that might actually work quite well though. Perhaps we'd have a better process if someone not involved in the dispute acted as champion for each party, so that even timid folk could be confident that the person they were dealing with was on their side. > It would also help if third parties kept their rants to a minimum. I'm not sure what sanction we could enforce for contempt of TC ;-) Cheers, Phil. -- |)| Philip Hands [+44 (0)20 8530 9560] HANDS.COM Ltd. |-| http://www.hands.com/ http://ftp.uk.debian.org/ |(| Hugo-Klemm-Strasse 34, 21075 Hamburg, GERMANY
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
