[maemo-developers] Beware 'Personal launcher'

[From: Mike Lococo]

> The answer is not testing of things being put into Extras <snip />
> 
> The answer for the community repository is a feedback mechanism, both for 
> packages themselves, and for contributors.  We need to create an easy way for 
> people to provide feedback on the apps they install from Extras and for 
> people to see the feedback level of both the app and the contributor before 
> they install it.

Agreed that individual testers gatewaying extras is a bad idea.  Some 
alternate proposals...

1) Require an application to spend some period of time in extras-devel 
without a major bug submission before promotion.  This wouldn't require 
technical enforcement, just a clear guideline for package-owners to 
follow.  If package-owners behave irresponsibly, the bug-wrangler or 
some similar role could chastise them and point them to the promotion 
guidelines.

2) Create a guideline for when a package should be demoted to 
extras-devel based on negative user feedback.  Using the recent personal 
launcher thread as an example, if an applet really does have a 
crash/reboot bug, it's filed in bugzilla, confirmed, and ignored for 
some period of time, that applet probably shouldn't be in extras. 
That's an extreme example, and in order to prevent frustration the 
guidelines for demotion must be very clear, and very strictly adhered 
to.  Leaving garbage, buggy, unmaintained apps in the end-user repo is 
bad juju, but so is pulling well-maintained apps just because they have 
a serious bug that happens to be found by a high-profile community 
member (not to pick on Eero who a huge amount of amazing work, but if 
someone else had found that bug demoting the app would never have been 
considered at all).

Thanks,
Mike