Debian MIA: Raiders of the "Lost" Maintainer
Debian project maintainers who just stop maintaining their software packages and fail to respond to mail are a big problem for the free Linux distribution. Now, Debian is introducing new rules to resolve the issue.
This was the decision taken by the Debian Quality Assurance (QA) team that met last week in Merida, Spain. The MIA team is responsible for volunteer Debian developers who go “missing in action” .
Now, whenever somebody reports a Debian developer as inactive to the MIA database, the following process applies. The team first sends a friendly mail to the “missing person” and waits 15 days for a response. The message is then repeated, after all, the original message might have gone astray. After another 15 days, the team sends another package that the team is considering tagging the Debian package as orphaned. The maintainer then has 30 days to respond before the team actually explicitly threatens to tag the package as orphaned. After another 15 days the package is then finally classified as orphaned, and after another 90 days, the Debian project sends a goodbye mail to the ex-developer.
The MIA project is quick to point out that sending mails to Debian developers is not its only purpose in life: it also happy to help volunteers to secure more help for package maintenance. The MIA database is non-public as it contains personal data.
The MIA Team is still looking for Debian developers interested in helping out. For more information, refer to the chapter Debian Developer Documentation
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
EU Sovereign Tech Fund Gains Traction
OpenForum Europe recently released a report regarding a sovereign tech fund with backing from several significant entities.
-
FreeBSD Promises a Full Desktop Installer
FreeBSD has lacked an option to include a full desktop environment during installation.
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.
-
Linux Kernel 6.17 Drops bcachefs
After a clash over some late fixes and disagreements between bcachefs's lead developer and Linus Torvalds, bachefs is out.
-
ONLYOFFICE v9 Embraces AI
Like nearly all office suites on the market (except LibreOffice), ONLYOFFICE has decided to go the AI route.