[aur-general] Moving packages to Community

[Thomas Dziedzic]

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 1:13 PM, Thomas S Hatch <thatch45 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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
>

I agree. Even if the packages are part of archlinux, the courteous
thing to do would be to send an email before moving the packages to
see if the original maintainer is onboard with it. Though he may not
own it, he does have a sense of authorship, and that needs to be taken
into account. We're still dealing with people here :)

-Thomas