agreeing a policy for maintainers and hackageDB

[Duncan Coutts]

If a few more people could read this nice short policy and say "yes that
looks fine, I agree" then that would be very helpful.

If this is to be something that we put on hackage and expect people to
follow then it needs to be *seen* to be supported by people in the
community. If we need to act on the policy we don't want to be open to
the accusation that the policy was just imposed by Cabal bureaucrats
hell-bent on spoiling people's fun but that it actually reflects the
general view of the Haskell hacker community.

Just because it isn't controversial doesn't mean we don't need your
support! :-)

Of course if you do have any questions or suggestions then now is a good
time to mention them.

Duncan

On Mon, 2008-06-23 at 10:05 +0100, Ross Paterson wrote:
> As a few people have noted, we need to agree a policy in this area.
> As I see it, the drivers are:
> 
> * users need to know whether what they're downloading is supported,
>   and if so by whom.
> * maintainers are entitled to control what goes out in their name.
> * allocating version numbers for a particular package name should be
>   the prerogative of the maintainer.
> 
> When something is agreed, I propose to put it on the hackageDB upload
> page and expect people to follow it.  Here's my first attempt:
> 
> 	If the Maintainer field names a person or group, the release as
> 	a whole (including packaging) is the named maintainer's approved
> 	release, which they are supporting (at least for some time after
> 	the release).  Ideally a maintainer would make that clear by
> 	uploading the release themselves.
> 
> 	A Maintainer value of "none" indicates that the package is
> 	not supported.
> 
> 	If a package is being maintained, any release not approved and
> 	supported by the maintainer should use a different package name.
> 	Then use the Maintainer field as above either to commit to
> 	supporting the fork yourself or to mark it as unsupported.