Re: Beyond QA: Uploaders field hygiene

Jonas Smedegaard <[email protected]> Sun, 16 Aug 2026 14:21:04 +0200
Newsgroups	gmane.linux.debian.devel.project
Message-ID	<[email protected]>
Quoting Simon Josefsson (2026-08-16 13:40:04)
> 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.

I agree that it is worthy of discussion whether our current rules make
sense to us or they need changing.

Please feel free to start such discussion - but separately from this
conversation, please.

This conversation is about clarifying our current rules, not which
different rules we might want instead, some day, if we can reach a
consensus on it.

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
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