Re: Beyond QA: Uploaders field hygiene

Simon Josefsson <[email protected]> Sun, 16 Aug 2026 13:40:04 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.project
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Jonas Smedegaard <[email protected]> writes:

>> I disagree -- and think this is at the core of what proper "team"
>> maintainance of packages could be.
>> 
>> To me, team maintainance would be one where the team as a collective
>> take responsibility for a package, but no individual person insists on
>> the ego-boost of assigning personal ownership of the outcome, and
>> through social means of the Uploader field signal that others should not
>> feel the same level of ownership.
>
> Do you mean "could be" and "would be" as future tense?

Yes.

> I am not simply nitpicking here - I genuinely find it quite confusing
> to mix in speculations about future Debian into a conversation about
> current rules in Debian.

Right, sorry for adding to that confusion.

I can't claim to understand what the current policy really is, or how it
is supposed to be implemented.  I'm not sure the MIA team post makes
that a lot more clearer either.  What seems clear is that the field is
not handled in a consistent way across the project, and the policies
around the fields could be clarified further.  So I jumped into
improvement mode, and wanted to take a step back and questioning the
basics.  I'm not sure we'll be able to find consensus on this topic
easily, but I think the current situation around Maintainer/Uploader
fields has a social dimension that affects long-term sustainability of
Debian so it is worthy of discussion.

/Simon

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