Re: admin/MAINTAINER edits

[Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:

>> What's going on with all these pointless (IMO) admin/MAINTAINER edits?
>
> They aren't pointless.  I asked for them.

I obviously disagree. :)

If you look at the VCS history of the file, then in the past decade you
are almost the only person who ever edited it. Everything else (bar ~ 2
commits) is just the slow deletion of obsolete information.
It was on the way out.

I could critique ever entry in the file, but will just pick one example.
The reftex additions are pointless, because every one of those files
already listed auctex-devel as the maintainer. It's just make-work and
duplication.

If someone wants to maintain foo.el, they should put their name in the
Maintainer field in foo.el.

(I'll leave aside the broader concept of whether "ownership" of files in
this way is useful; eg
http://producingoss.com/en/managing-participants.html#territoriality )

> In fact, the entire section 3 could go away, as it doesn't provide any
> useful information, IMO.

At least we agree on that much. :)

> Many/most our files say the maintainer is FSF, which is not very
> useful.

Zero files say that the maintainer is FSF.
(I know because I removed such statements some time ago.)

>> (And the presumption is that the Author is the Maintainer if none is
>> explicitly listed.)
>
> That assumption is incorrect in many cases.  The original authors are
> long gone or lost interest or no longer work on Emacs.

Indeed true.