[See in-line below]

On Sat, 2017-09-16 at 21:11 +0200, Bertrand Garrigues wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm currently preparing the next release of groff (I still have to
> commit a few changes in the build system but I'm not far from making a
> candidate package).  In order to upload a tarball (into alpha.gnu.org
> and ftp.gnu.org) I mailed ftp-upl...@gnu.org so that they could give me
> access to these ftp site, but apparently not being the official
> maintainer is a problem, here is was they answered:
> 
> "The currently listed maintainer for groff is Ted Harding
> <ted.hard...@wlandres.net>. Only him or an uploader nominated by him
> can have their key added to the ftp server. If he has stepped down as
> a maintainer this needs to be resolved prior to requesting a new
> uploader key to be added. Please discuss this within the project and
> request any changes in the maintainers to maintain...@gnu.org. When
> the new maintainer(s) are added to the files then they can request
> their key to be added to the ftp, alternatively they can nominate
> uploaders to have their keys added too."

My "maintainer" role (insofar as I possibly officially had one)
has always been marginal, especially compared with Werber's.
I think that the above reply may be either mistaken or out-of-date.
Visiting the groff web=page at gnu.org    
  https://www.gnu.org/software/groff
shows:
[A]: User issues lead: Ted Harding.
[B]: Technical issues lead: Werner Lemberg.
but does not state that either of us is a maintainer (in the GNU
sense of the word).

Further, the following paragraph is in the panel at top right:

  GNU troff is looking for a maintainer. If you’re interested,
  please take a look at this general information about GNU
  packages and being a GNU maintainer, and then email
  maintain...@gnu.org with a bit about your background
  and particular interest in this package. Thanks. 

I don't know who wrote this (maybe Werner), but it indicates
that, in fact, groff lacks a maintainer! And I wonder where
(I couldn't track it down on the above web-page) the groff
maintainer[s] are/is listed.

So my suggestion would be that someone who knows their way
around the organisation of gnu.oeg (and I find it confusing!)
should undertake the task of establishing a real maintainer.
This might require someone to explicitly volunteer.

Sorry to be unhelpful -- but I hope the above may be useful.
I'm willing to try to do what I can to help this along.

Best wishes to all,
Ted.


> 
> I can take in charge part of the job of the maintainer: the build
> system, making release; I've also studied src/roff/troff source code and
> I'm planning to propose changes in `troff' to support Knuth-Plass
> paragraph formating algorithm (a long-term task and of course not for
> the next release).  But I'm not competent for questions/bugs on macro
> packages (there are currently lots of open bugs and patch requests for
> macro packages) and I can't be a technical lead like Werner, I could be
> at most a "co-maintainer".
> 
> So what should we do now?
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Bertrand Garrigues
> 


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