When coming back from DebConf9, I wrote this pledge:
As a package maintainer, I will do my best to help the Debian project release a stable version of our operating system. In particular, I will work together with the release team and I will keep all packages associated to my name free of release critical bugs.
To this effect, if I’m not registered as being busy or in vacation, I will start working on my release critical bugs as soon as possible (in less than 1 week in common cases). If I can’t deal with them in a timely fashion, I will state it clearly in the associated bug reports, tag them help and invite other contributors either to provide a patch or to do a non-maintainer upload.
If I do not manage to handle release critical bugs in the above described way, or if I almost never deal with any of my RC bugs by myself, I will:
- not refuse help and even propose co-maintenance to good contributors
- recognize my failure and actively try to find a new maintainer and/or co-maintainers
- not complain if the quality assurance team decides to orphan the package
I recognize that my work is not limited to unstable. I will also work with the stable release team and the security team to provide updated packages for the stable and/or testing distribution when some issues deserve it.
I am aware of the limits of my skills and my available time and I will avoid packaging software that I would not be able to maintain properly.
It tries to sum up the minimal expectations that Debian should have towards the package maintainers. I tried first to get this pledge integrated into the NM/DM process but the discussion concluded that it would be best to document this in the developers-reference. There’s already a chapter called “Debian Developer’s Duties” where this can nicely fit.
I submitted this as a wishlist request for the developers-reference soon after and it’s still open. Now I went to the next step and prepared a patch that restructures the chapter about developer duties. See #548867 for details.
Follow me on Identi.ca, Twitter and Facebook. Or subscribe to this blog by RSS or by email.
So, you’re nominating yourself for DPL or is someone else already doing it?
Heh 🙂 No, I do not intend to run for DPL this year. Stefano has been awesome and my plans are not really compatible with that position.
Join in Debian is too hard. I build the package and downloaded in mentors.debian.net. A few months of his revised and uploaded a lot of people, and no one contacted me.
Hello Paul, uploading the package there is not enough to find a sponsor. You should send a mail to debian-mentors@lists.debian.org. I can’t guarantee a positive response but at least you have a chance of finding someone. Another alternative is to find a team where the package could be co-maintained and contact the team (see http://wiki.debian.org/Teams).