Re: RFC: Why are so many debian packages outdated?

On Thu, Jul 26, 2012 at 11:02:10AM +0200, Svante Signell wrote:
> Well there is experimental that could be used to package pre-releases
> and new releases to make them suitable for unstable and testing _before_
> the freeze! 
> 
> Add to that unresponsive package maintainers, refusing to package new
> versions of upstream software, even with wishlist bugs filed. Take a
> look at the age of some of these bug, both in time and release numbers. 
> There are people willing to package new releases, but they are blocked
> by the current package maintainer. That problem is maybe more related to
> the d-d thread entitled: "Hijacking packages for fun and profit" BoF at
> DebConf

There are a ton of reasons why Debian may have an older version of
an upstream release. For example, and I hasten to point out that
the following list is by no means exhaustive, and not all of the
possibilities are common:

* The Debian package maintainer is dead, but nobody noticed it yet, and
  nobody has wanted an update badly enough to do an NMU or to adopt the
  package.
* The upstream release is actually a fake. It's a trojan, which was
  put there by the NSA in order to infiltrate the CIA mainframe. The
  Debian package maintainer noticed this and uploaded that version of
  the package to non-free instead of main, since the trojan code does
  not come with proper source.
* Upstream has moved the RSS feed for new releases without notifying
  the old feed of the move, so the Debian package maintainer missed that,
  and doesn't actually know about the new release. Due to a complicated
  series of happenstance involving rainbows, midget unicorns, and the
  ongoing rewrite of the Netsurf web browser, the Debian package maintainer
  is not able to find the new feed because it would require doing a
  web search and their browser doesn't have working form support now.
  No other browser is available on the Amiga they're using as their only
  computer, either.
* The new release is requested by insistent Hurd porters, and the Debian
  package maintainer absolutely loathes the Hurd, and will refuse to
  upload any packages that work on the Hurd.
* The Debian package maintainer suffers from mental problems cause by
  reading debian-devel too much, and now has a nervous breakdown every
  time they recognize a name as someone whom they've seen on the list.
* The Debian development process is being sabotaged by Microsoft sending
  people to the developers' houses pretending to be TV license checkers
  or Jehova's witnesses every time they detect, using the hardware 
  wireless keylogger embeddded in every PC, that the developer is trying
  to run any Debian packaging command.
* Apple is also sabotaging Debian by paying me to write snarky e-mails on
  Debian mailing lists to distract everyone from working on the actual
  release, so that we can get past the freeze and start uploading things
  again without having to worry that it breaks things in ways that 
  makes the freeze longer.

-- 
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