[aur-general] Moving packages to Community

[Thomas S Hatch]

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 12:05 PM, Lukas Fleischer
<archlinux at cryptocrack.de>wrote:

> 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.
>


Angel has many good and valid points, I am proud of my contributions to open
source and to Arch. My willingness to give without the expectation of
receiving anything back has given me, personally, much more than I could
have expected. Also it is true, that what you submit to the AUR, Arch
reserves rights to.

But these points should not reduce the fact that a person contributed the
package, and even when I have had to completely rewrite a PKGBUILD before
moving the package to community I still think that it is important to
recognize the maintainer who paved the road.

I am going to maintain, that a TU is not to be required to contact the AUR
maintainer, but it is the courteous thing to do, and that we should develop
and maintain an atmosphere of respect.

To reiterate Lukas, notifications should ALWAYS be placed before deleting
AUR packages and moving AUR packages to community. Thats how I would draw
the line, posting the comments about moves and deletions should be
mandatory, and contacting the maintainer should be a strongly encouraged
courtesy.

-Thomas  S Hatch