For those who care about their packages in Ubuntu

[Matthew Palmer]

On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 12:41:49PM -0800, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Sat, Jan 21, 2006 at 07:13:31AM +1100, Matthew Palmer wrote:
> > On Fri, Jan 20, 2006 at 09:20:33AM -0800, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > > By way of example, the Debian maintainer is equipped to answer questions
> > > like "why is the package set up this way?", "what are your plans for it?",
> > > etc., while the MOTU team are not.
> > 
> > What the?  By that logic, the upstream author should be in the Maint: field,
> > since they're in the *best* position to answer those questions for the
> > majority content of the package.  At any rate, in most cases the answer,
> > from the Debian maintainer, to the first question would either be "Dunno,
> > can't remember" or "the previous maintainer was a known crack addict", while
> > the answer to the second would be "<shrug> make sure it doesn't break, I
> > suppose" -- none of whick are particularly more interesting answers than
> > what you'd get from the MOTUs.
> 
> If I were to accept your declaration that the Debian maintainer is equally
> ill-equipped to discuss the package, then it follows that they are an
> equally valid value for the Maintainer field.

It only follows if your definition of maintainer is "can answer all
development questions".  If you're going to go that way, you may as well put
the man in the moon as the maintainer of your packages, as he's got as much
chance, in the general case, of answering those questions.  Thus, I'd say
that your definition of "Maintainer" is bollocks.

> There really isn't any point in arguing our individual views, though.  What
> I'm interested in is what will satisfy a majority of Debian developers, and
> the proposed poll seems like the closest we'll get to that.

All you'll get is the loud minority having a whinge then, no matter what the
outcome.

- Matt