Re: Bug#218466: Please add animals-game to your package

Hi all,

well, first I'd like to apologize to everyone involved so far. I didn't mean 
to make this such a mess. After all, it's really a minor contribution, as Ben 
already pointed out.

My intention was simply to provide a better replacement for animals. Since 
this program is still officially orphaned, despite the statement of Jim Lynch 
(maintainer of animals), I just thought that it would be alright to write a 
similar game.

> > * Ben Armstrong <[email protected]> [2003-10-31 23:19]:
> > > There is no maintainer for animals.  It belongs to the QA group.  So
> > > can't it just be killed and replaced with animals-game?

Well, that's exactly what I thought in the first place. Please bear in mind 
that this is the first _new_ package I added to Debian. So I wasn't aware of 
the process. I filed an ITP, and although Martin objected shortly afterwards, 
the package was uploaded. That's certainly my fault, because I didn't tell my 
sponsor about the objection on time. After that, I was pretty sure that this 
package would be rejected, because the automated mail told me, that every new 
package must be added manually.

Unfortunately, the whole debate animals vs. animals-game wasn't noticed by the 
person who allowed animals-game to go into unstable. In a conversation with 
Martin I proposed to file a bug against ftp.debian.org to remove 
animals-game. Martin said, that I should let it rest there for a while, now 
that it's gone into unstable. He wanted to have things sorted out before the 
release and decide whether to include animals or animals-game.

Therefore, I waited until animals-game reached testing. After all, I didn't 
want to do any further steps without being sure that animals-game would be 
releasable.

It was just yesterday that I noticed the migration of animals-game from 
unstable to testing, so I wrote this bug report to have it included in the 
junior-games-text package.

My next step was meant to be (and now certainly _will_ be) to send a mail to 
the O: bug of animals and the maintainer, to tell about this _releasable_ and 
up-to-date package with a (in my opinion) better replacement.

Moreover, I've had very positive feedback about the program, and even a 
translation into Polish was sent to me only one day after animals-game hit 
unstable. That's why I felt confident about my doing.

[Martin Michlmayr]
> > The animals "maintainer" claims he's still the maintainer.  It told
> > Tobias repeatedly that he should talk to the animals maintainer to get
> > this sorted out, but he obviously isn't interested in the right
> > solution.

Well, I definitely am. As I pointed out, I wanted to have animals-game in 
testing before I proceeded with any further steps. If this is the Wrong Thing 
in your opinion, you should have been clearer about what you want me to do in 
our private conversation. I thought it should rest a while in the archives 
and then I should sort this issue out with the maintainer of animals. I still 
think it's the best way to be sure that a package goes into testing without 
problems before doing any further steps.

[Ben Armstrong]
> Crap, I just read #202174 from top to bottom.  I'm inclined to include
> neither until the whole mess is sorted out.  I don't want to be in the
> middle of it.  It's a minor contribution to junior-games-text, anyway.
>
> Tobias, I wish you had been up front to me about this issue.

I'm really sorry about that, Ben. Hope I've made things a little bit clearer 
with this mail.

-- 

Tobias

    Don't you just hate it when there's not enough room to fin