Treating unmaintained packages / stepping down as a maintainer

[KanjiMonster]

This is mostly a discussion topic for everyone. Currently we have quite clear rules on how to become a maintainer, but what's missing is how does one stop being one, and what should happen with the package.

For now we just removed the package instantly, but maybe we want to keep it a while - having no maintainer does not instantly make a package bad. Leaving it in for a while will also prevent tickets about packages going missing from snapshot builds.

My first Idea would be:

As the maintainer stepping down:

1. remove yourself as maintainer (pull request/commit)
2. open an issue about $pkg having no maintainer/requiring one (probably a "help wanted" ticket).

Then after some time (e.g. one month, or latest before the next release), if until then nobody wanted to take over, we actually remove it.

[nmav]

I'd increase the waiting time for more than a month, since packages don't become obsolete so quickly and prospective maintainers may not be immediately available to adopt a package. Otherwise I pretty much agree.

Practice in other distributions has also shown the need for unresponsive maintainer process, i.e., someone disappearing and not contributing any more. There should also be a similar process to take the maintainership of such a package.

[hnyman]

What would actually happen to the packages removed? Really deleted? The first 1-2 packages removed from here (tiff, giflib) were added back to oldpackages, but that does not sound feasible in the long run. I guess libgsm has been the only completely deleted package, so far.

I feel uncomfortable with completely removing packages. Information about them should still be somehow available at the tip of the repository, not just at an arbitrary point in history.

An alternative might be to create a directory path "/abandoned" or "/unmaintained" and move the packages there. Perhaps mark them either with "BROKEN" or with a new flag "ABANDONED", so that buildbot would skip building them. If somebody later wants to adopt them, they would be more easily available.

[jow-]

I too think there could be an abandonned repository within the same github organization where unmaintained stuff gets moved to. However I'm against keeping the bitrot directly within packages.git

[thess]

I agree with @jow, we should use the packages-abandoned repo right here which he created last April. I can resurrect libgsm and start things going if I have check-in rights to that repo. If tiff and giflib are in oldpackages, I can move those too.

[hnyman]

If packages-abandoned is adopted, I suggest that it is added to feeds.conf.default as a commented-out feed, so that users can find it a bit easier.

[jow-]

Fine with me.

[dibdot]

reference current discussion #6584 and close this one.