FFMpeg package maintenance, was: Multimedia Teams in Debian

[Reinhard Tartler]

I haven't said the following aloud yet, because I wanted to discuss this
seperatly from the merging discussion. But that topic was rised in part
of that discussion, I'm replying to that part seperatly with a new
subject. Please read this mal al an RFC.

Felipe Sateler <fsateler at gmail.com> writes:

>> ffmpeg-debian is very special because of its, well interesting,
>> packaging. have a look at the latest commits :)
>
> Hmm, OK. Do you fear that "collaborators" will go and mess up your packaging? 
> I haven't seen that happen yet. There's nothing wrong with noting special 
> packages, though.

Well, the packaging itself is sort of intimidating, I'd think. Potential
contributors are likely to just run away because of its complexity. I
don't think that complexity is bad here, ffmpeg does need special care
for a number of reasons. I just say that it needs close communication
with the other people working on it.

Because of this, I think we need some other approach to attract people
to work on the package (and I definitly do want testers, etc). What I've
been considering is the following steps:

 - document this in the "static news" section of the PTS
   (cf. developers reference, section 4.10.4. The PTS Interface)
 - use ffmpeg-debian at packages.debian.org as maintainer list
 - subscribe the pkg-multimedia-maint list here, so that the bugs and
   archive mail continue to appear on the lists.
 - try to direct internal communication to the PTS, so that contributors
   that are only interested in ffmpeg receive only mails (discussion,
   bugs and archive notifications) related to ffmpeg and avoid manual
   filtering mails for other packages.

Loïc, Fabian, Comments?

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4