On Sat, Feb 05, 2011 at 11:45:20AM -0700, Thomas S Hatch wrote:
Greg, You have a valid point, personally I have always asked the maintainer of a package for objections before moving a package into community. I also want to continue to express my deep gratitude for the packagers who contribute to the AUR. They are really the frontline in Arch development, the blood on the knife's edge.
We as trusted users need to show the devs in the AUR the utmost respect and appreciation. I would also like to point out: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/TU_Person_Specification All TUs we should adhere to the first bullet under "At Least" on this wiki entry.
I hope that my fellow TUs agree that we should give AUR contributors the utmost respect, they deserve it.
A behavior of respect will help us, the TUs, improve Arch, it will allow us to bring more people onto the Arch development teams, and continue our march to making Arch greater.
I personally asked for objections using AUR comments in most cases and waited some days before moving stuff. Nevertheless, I don't see a huge problem with just moving stuff. Moving a package to the binary repos shouldn't be regarded as stealing but as an improvement for the community. The AUR ain't a place for competitions (like "Which package has the most votes?" or "Who maintains the coolest packages?") but a place to provide source packages until a TU/Dev steps up and maintains the package in [community]/[extra]/[core]. Still, I'd prefer to have some announcement before moving a package. And another one just before removing it (so that users being notified about a package become aware of the move). AUR comments seem to be the appropriate place for this.