Beating the dead horse about my patch some more

[Scott James Remnant]

On Thu, 2006-07-20 at 11:51 -0400, Shawn McMahon wrote:

> http://syberghost.livejournal.com/115079.html
> 
If you look at enscript you'll note:

 * There is no Ubuntu Bug Contact for this package (ie. it is not a
   package Ubuntu particularly care about)

 * There are no Ubuntu changes to this package (ie. we take it directly
   from Debian anyway)

 * It is maintained by the Debian QA Group (ie. it has no maintainer,
   and has been orphaned)

 * The last upstream release/update was 2003! (ie. it is probably not
   maintained upstream, either)


You've picked a package that is, for all intents and purposes, abandoned
by anyone who previously cared about it.  This happens from time to
time, and is a side-effect of the mostly volunteer nature of Open Source
development, people move on.

However this is also one of its strengths ... the package may not be
being maintained by the previous owner, but now the time is ripe for
somebody else to come along, pick it up, and take it over themselves!

There's nothing stopping anybody else stepping up, and making it even
better.

What kind of person would do this?  Well, the kind of person who clearly
uses it sufficiently to be finding bugs; and with the developer skills
to be able to fix both bugs and write patches for them.


Instead of bitching, why not put together your own "unofficial" release
with the two patches applied?  Contact the original author and GNU to
ask whether he minds you adopting it upstream, and present your own
release as an example that you can do the work.

Probably also worth spending a few minutes on packaging, and putting
together a new Debian release containing your own and getting that
sponsored into Debian -- you'll find plenty of mentors willing to help
with that.

And so on.

Scott
-- 
Scott James Remnant
scott at ubuntu.com
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