[aur-general] About orphaning all packages of inactive users

[Jonathan Steel]

On Fri 19 Jul 2013 at 01:09, Maxime GAUDUIN wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 12:24 AM, Alexander Rødseth <rodseth at gmail.com>wrote:
> > [...]
> > About causing panic when orphaning: the package will continue to be
> > available and work even if it's orphaned, but now there is a chance
> > that someone will pick up the thread where the previous maintainer
> > left of and improve and update the PKGBUILD. If someone panics from
> > this, perhaps it's still a good trade?
> >
> > The reason I'm asking is because I suspect that I'm more fond of
> > cleaning up old cruft than the average TU/Dev, and I don't wish to
> > orphan or delete packages in a way that is perceived as rash.
> >
> > In my opinion, being relatively quick to orphan, but hesitant to
> > delete, should result in a better AUR repository for everyone, as long
> > as the criterions for disowning packages is somewhat conservative. I
> > would say a user being inactive for more than a year is quite
> > sufficient.
> >
> > A comment from another TU or Dev would be especially helpful.
> 
> I support this too. Orphaning is reversible and will most (preferably
> always :P) of the time lead to an improvement of the PKGBUILD, I see no
> reason not to do it when the user is clearly inactive. As for deletions, I
> would also tend to delete old stuff more easily, but I understand and
> respect the wish to keep placeholders in the AUR.

I think we should orphan all packages of a maintainer that is clearly not
active, especially if they have packages marked out of date for a long time or
requests in the comments that have not been addressed. If in doubt, an email to
them won't hurt, but in my experience this has always lead to disowning them.
This will then allow other users to make improvements immediately rather than
having to wait two weeks for the current maintainer to (not) reply, and then
make a request here and wait to have that actioned.

-- 
Jonathan Steel
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