So, six Devuan developers walk into a bike shed...

At the Devuan Developer meeting on December 20th, 2017, fsmithred asked
about package metadata for the desktop-base package currently being
updated for the Devuan Ascii release. The questions were:

* What text should be put in the Maintainer field of the control file?

* What text should be put in the Uploaders field of the control file?

Specifically, Centurion_Dan was listed as the current maintainer, and
fsmithred wondered if he changed it to himself, would Centurion_Dan be
annoyed at or would he be relieved at the change?

After review of the Debian policy (Sections 3.3, 5.6.1, and 5.6.2), the
form of the text to go in those fields was clear. Maintainer must
contain a single name and e-mail address. Uploaders may contain the
names and e-mail addresses of co-maintainers, folded if desired.

https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/policy.pdf#section.3.3

https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/policy.pdf#section.5.6

This led into a larger discussion about Devuan policy for the
Maintainer field for Devuan packages. After some discussion, fsmithred
suggested that the discussion be tabled until next time. It was agreed
that opening the discussion to the devuan-dev mailing list to solicit
feedback would be helpful.

Stored in my fragile memory of a long time ago yesterday, the following
discussion points were brought up:

1. Should the Maintainer field contain the name/address of a Devuan
    developer, or should there be (a/many) Devuan maintainer group(s)?

2. If there is a/many Devuan maintainer groups, what should the e-mail
    address(es) of those Devuan maintainer group(s) be?

3. For desktop-base in particular, do we prefer an e-mail address like
    devuan-maintainer-desktop@???? Or do we prefer a more generic
    devuan-maintainer@????

4. Should we call our maintainers by the title "maintainers"? It was
    suggested that perhaps the title implied ownership, power, and
    control over a package. The desired role would be closer to a
    caretaker or steward; someone entrusted to care for a package on
    behalf of the Devuan community and its consensus.

    Note: The Debian tools expect the name of the field Maintainer to
          be Maintainer. It is NOT anticipated that we would change the
          name of the field in the package metadata, as this would imply
          changing all package related tools as well. The only change
          proposed here is the title by which we call Devuan maintainers.

5. Should developers who are placed into either the Maintainer or
    the Uploaders field be offered an @devuan.org e-mail address as
    an official contact point for Devuan work?

As noted, the discussion did not reach any conclusions, but was tabled
in favor of soliciting more input on these topics. This e-mail is your
invitation to weigh in with your opinions, thoughts, and ideas.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Patrick