In article <20070618151740.GA30836@lain.home> Marc wrote:
: On Mon, Jun 18, 2007 at 02:45:30PM +0100, David Brownlee wrote:
: >       MAINTAINER currently has two meanings:
: > 
: >         "Here is someone you can talk to about changes to this package"
: > 
: >           or
: > 
: >         "Consult this person before you make any changes to this package"

: This does boggle me, a bit.

: In my world, over in OpenBSD, the MAINTAINER variable means the person
: feels at least partly responsible for the package.  Enough so that they
: need to be consulted for any non-trivial changes that may break stuff
: (you can't be responsible for something if anybody can change it under
: your feet). As a guideline, we still allow two kinds of changes without
: consulting the maintainer:
: - infrastructure sweeps, where we adjust to recent features of the tree
: (in some of these cases, it's too costly to wait for every maintainer to
: say okay... it's assumed that the person doing the change has performed
: a build, and it's not done by a lot of people).
: - to fix some obvious breakage in a hurry (and then, it's still preferable
: to have an okay from another developer, be him maintainer or not).

  Yes, that is pretty much what I undestood MAINTAINER to imply in
pkgsrc as well.

  During pkgsrcCon some years back we discussed adding another
variable with the first of your meanings, but nothing came of it.  I
see the benefit of being able to represent both types of developers
(interested/knowledgeable and responsible).

  To err on the save side, please treat MAINTAINER as ``should be
consulted'' until we have settled this issue.

					yours,
					dillo