New software created for Ubuntu

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Wed, Jun 09, 2010 at 12:54:31PM +0200, Raphael Hertzog wrote:
> On Wed, 09 Jun 2010, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > > I was speaking of the case where Ubuntu/Canonical developers are the
> > > upstream developers. I guess upstream maintenance is far more work than
> > > simple package maintenance and maintaining the package in Debian is not
> > > much more work.
> > 
> > If you replace "Ubuntu/Canonical" with "Mozilla" or "Linux kernel" or
> > "OpenOffice.org", would you say the same thing?  Why or why not?
> 
> No, because they are not building a Linux distribution.

Can you be a bit more specific here?  Why is this the critical difference in
your opinion?

> > I don't think we currently suffer from a shortage of feedback (quite the
> > opposite!), though it would be good to have Debian better represented.  I
> > don't see the additional workload you referred to, though.
> 
> As you know Debian is more picky on quality of the packaging and it
> happens that Debian developers are changing the packaging that Ubuntu
> has already done. Many of those quality checks come from Debian
> contributors that are monitoring the Debian archive and regularly
> reporting bugs. Fixing those sometimes involve changing the packaging
> in important ways and thus introducing a migration (package rename for
> example) for Ubuntu if you have already published the existing packages in
> a stable release.
> 
> It doesn't happen often, but it's still better when we can avoid it.

I agree that it is better to avoid it, but I think a better mechanism for
this is to agree on policy.  Package naming, for example, should be done
consistently in both projects, and in general, it is.  Where there are
exceptions, we should understand why and see if we can avoid similar
problems in the future.

Ubuntu policy incorporates Debian policy, so if there are important quality
checks which are not covered, that's a gap we should address.

> > As an upstream, we should always strive to be responsive to package
> > maintainers, and where that isn't happening, it should be discussed openly
> > (before it escalates to finger-pointing) so that we can understand the
> > problem and solve it.
> 
> So what's the proper procedure to follow when a Debian developer is unable
> to get an answer from the person/team that wrote the software for Ubuntu?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Ubuntu/ForDebianDevelopers#Contact

"If you have questions about the material on this page, or have an issue
regarding collaboration between Debian and Ubuntu, please contact
debian at ubuntu.com."

It is also OK to raise issues on this mailing list (ubuntu-devel).  However,
since this list is about building the distribution, and not upstream
development, the relevant people may not be subscribed.

> > If no Debian developer is interested in maintaining the software, then it
> > won't be maintained in Debian.  Ubuntu can't change that reality.  If the
> > software is just not that interesting to Debian, then it probably isn't
> > worth packaging.  If it is interesting, then someone will package it
> > eventually.
> 
> My take is that most software that Ubuntu/Canonical has written is
> interesting to Debian but that it takes time for someone to step up
> maintaining it in Debian (usually until the software is more widely known
> because it has been shown to provide a cool new feature to a recently
> released version of Ubuntu).

This doesn't seem like a problem to me.  It's important that someone in
Debian take an interest in the software; otherwise it will be perceived as
Ubuntu polluting Debian with useless orphaned packages.

> Thus it would help everybody to package it for Debian right from the
> start, get useful feedback from Debian users/contributors and then
> mark it as "Request For Adoption" if you don't want to maintain it in the
> long term within Debian. You could even advertise those RFA on -devel
> to increase the speed at which you'll find new maintainers.

I don't think that Debian developers in general would appreciate "fire and
forget" uploads of packages which are de facto orphaned.  Filing an RFP or
RFA, without an upload, sounds more reasonable.  Steve Langasek said that
this has been proposed as a general practice.

> > Why should it matter whether the software originates from Ubuntu or
> > another upstream?
> 
> A random upstream does not care about Debian more than RedHat and is
> usually not involved in packaging.

A random upstream may care equally about multiple distributions, but that
doesn't mean they don't care about Debian.  It simply isn't their
responsibility to package software for Debian.  Maintaining Debian packages
is what Debian does best.

Sebastien did a good job of explaining that this additional responsibility
isn't "free" just because someone is maintaining the package in Ubuntu.
It's been a while since I was actively maintaining packages in Debian, but
at that time, if someone purported to be a package maintainer but did not
run Debian unstable (or used a chroot) they were ridiculed.  Debian
developers said it was impossible to do a good job of package maintenance
without running sid, and there is some validity to that view.

I would not want to see Ubuntu developers subjected to this, nor can they
be expected to do their work twice.

-- 
 - mdz