Bug#1031046: Asterisk removed from Debian Bookworm

[Jonas Smedegaard]

Hi Antony,

Quoting Antony Stone (2023-05-26 16:58:54)
> I've just discovered this "bug report" and I'm very disappointed by it.
> 
> Please can someone tell me:
> 
> 1. How many people are involved as Asterisk Debian Package Maintainers?

Asterisk is maintained in the [VoIP team], and in principle anyone in
that team can contribute directly to the git repo of asterisk packaging
(and also most of the approximately 1000 formal Debian Developers has
write access to the git repo as well, but will only do so for simpler
quickfixes - anyone generally interested in Asterisk maintenance is
expected to join the team).

In reality, however, not everyone in our team are familiar with all of
the packages we maintain together.  In recent times, all [releases] of
Asterisk since 16.16.1~dfsg+~2.10-1 in January 2021 was issued by me,
and before that Bernhard Schmidt (almost) solely maintained Asterisk
packaging since 13.20.0~dfsg-1 in April 2018.

Unfortunately [Bernhard cannot grasp] how I embed PJProject, and I
cannot grasp how he did it previously.  Effectively, Asterisk has had a
single maintainer for the past 5 years.

[VoIP team]: https://salsa.debian.org/groups/pkg-voip-team/-/group_members

[releases]: https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/asterisk/news/

[Bernhard cannot handle]: https://bugs.debian.org/1014133#25


> 2. Has this number decreased noticeably since the previous Debian release 
> Bullseye?

Asterisk packaging in Debia has had a low bus factor for quite some
time.


> 3. Has anyone contacted the Asterisk community (for example via 
> https://community.asterisk.org ) to see whether additional volunteers would be 
> willing to help with the effort involved in keeping Asterisk in the Debian 
> project?

No, I haven't done any recruitment work, and neither has anyone else -
to the best of my knowledge.

If you are volunteering to either help yourself or to try do some
recrutiment, then that's much appreciated.

Unfortunately it is too late now for getting Asterisk part of upcoming
stable Debian - but it is regardless helpful for the maintenance in
*unstable* and *testing* during the lifetime of upcoming stable, which
includes the ability for offering it unofficially for upcoming stable
Debian through https://backports.debian.org/


Kind regards,

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/
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