[23415] trunk/dports/archivers/zlib/Portfile

[markd at macports.org]

Eric Hall <opendarwin.org at darkart.com> on Saturday, March 31, 2007 at
11:32 AM -0800 wrote:
>	There was a rule about bugs being free for anyone to fix/patch/commit
>after notifying the port maintainer and a 72 hour timeout.
>	Has that been removed, or just lost to the fog of time?
>	Is that a rule that people are comfortable with?

I'm comfortable with it, but the problem is that I think we have a large
number of maintainers listed who are no longer maintaining.  So while I'm
comfortable with the rule above, and it is easy enough to remember, if I
see 5 old bugs that I could fix in 15 minutes and I have time right now
but I think the probability of any response from a maintainer (let alone a
fast one) is very low, then will the community (and myself) be better
served by sending out emails from trac and waiting on responses and
tracking all that stuff, or just fixing them?  If it is a complex or
critial port, then I'll not touch it, but if it is a lesser used broken
port and/or a minor update then I might.  If I know the maintainer is
responsive then I'll definitely cc in trac and not worry about it after
that.  So I think the key detail is not the rule above, but that even
responsive maintainers may not be able to respond in 72 hours and so few
formally drop maintainership when they stop maintaining that our whole
framework of rules about committing is shaky if taken too seriously.

Mark