Transition to Ubuntu specific Maintainer: fields

[Martin Pitt]

Hello Ubuntu developers,

a fair while ago, the Debian project collectively decided that Ubuntu
source and binary packages should not carry Debian's maintainers in
their Maintainer: field any more. Instead, we shall preserve them in
the Original-Maintainer: field and put an Ubuntu specific contact into
Maintainer:. Please see the specification [1] for details.

With the recent dpkg upload [2], this now gets enforced. I. e.
dpkg-source (called from dpkg-buildpackage and debuild) refuses to
create a source package if the version number indicates Ubuntu
modifications, but the Maintainer address is not Ubuntuish. The new
default values for these fields are:
  
  Ubuntu Core Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss at lists.ubuntu.com>

for packages in main and restricted, and

  Ubuntu MOTU Developers <ubuntu-motu at lists.ubuntu.com>

for packages in universe and multiverse.

However, if a particular package deserves a more specific contact,
then it is encouraged to use a personal or team mailing list contact
(however, it must be an @ubuntu.com address).

In source package's debian/control fields, the original maintainer
must be preserved in the field

  XSBC-Original-Maintainer:
 
dpkg will then create an 'Original-Maintainer:' field in the .dsc
(flag 'S'), .deb (flag 'B') and .changes (flag 'C') files. If you are
interested in the details of this XSBC magic, please see [3].

In the next four weeks (until Feisty's beta freeze) I will coordinate
the necessary 129 source package rebuilds which are necessary for
getting all binary packages in Ubuntu main fixed for the new
maintainer fields. If you are maintaining a particular set of packages
that matter size-wise, and you are sure that you want to upload a new
version in the next month, please add them to [4].

Thank you for your attention,

Martin Pitt
on behalf of the Ubuntu distro team

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebianMaintainerField
[2] http://librarian.launchpad.net/6442300/dpkg_1.13.24ubuntu4_source.changes
[3] http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-controlfields.html#s5.7
[4] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MaintainerFieldRebuilds

-- 
Martin Pitt        http://www.piware.de
Ubuntu Developer   http://www.ubuntu.com
Debian Developer   http://www.debian.org
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