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.

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