David Brownlee wrote:
>     If a package is owned by tech-pkg its available for anyone
>     to update, but if it has a maintainer then its considered
>     poilte to notify them before updating it. This can act as
>     a deterrant for updating packages.
> 
>     Many of the packages for which I am the 'maintainer' I have
>     no problems with anyone else updating.  Would there be any
>     sense in having some way to differentiate these cases in
>     Makefiles?

There had been a long, long discussion at PkgsrcCon 2005 about this 
topic. There was a suggestion to add a new variable SUPPORTERS which 
would hold all the mail addresses of developers that are interested in 
the package and maybe know some of the internals, but don't want/need to 
be asked for modifications.

This variable would be a good addition to MAINTAINER, as it is currently 
defined by the pkgsrc guide:

     http://www.netbsd.org/Documentation/pkgsrc/pkgsrc.html

Roland