[Distutils] Colour this bikeshed: Name for setuptools fork

[P.J. Eby]

At 04:53 PM 7/17/2009 +0200, Lennart Regebro wrote:
>2009/7/17 P.J. Eby <pje at telecommunity.com>:
> > Setuptools was something I originally wrote for common requirements in my
> > work projects...  then expanded into a funded project to provide Chandler
> > with a plugin infrastructure.  These days, I don't have time to code on the
> > projects I *enjoy* and *want* to code on...  and setuptools as it stands
> > today is not one of those projects.
>
>This is completely understandable, and a good reason not to work on
>it. The problem is that you simultaneously have prevented others to
>work on it,

False.  Jim Fulton has had commit privileges for ages (and has 
committed sizable chunks of code), and Ian Bicking would be equally 
welcome to them, if he asked.  (Ian contributed the Python 2.6 egg 
for the 0.6c9 release, and of course he pioneered support for 
Subversion and Sourceforge downloads in easy_install.)  And I'd 
seriously consider Philip Jenvey as well, as he's done a ton of 
Jython-compatibility work.

In other words, people I know and trust to be qualified for the job 
are quite free to maintain it.  If Jim or Ian wanted to "adopt" 
setuptools or become primary maintainers, I'd frankly jump at the opportunity!

Mainly, I trust Jim and Ian because they're thorough, cautious, and 
sensitive to "legacy" issues.  I know they're not going to go in and 
reverse years of policy until and unless they have a damn good 
understanding of both the old and the new requirements, and have a 
plan to address compatibility and migration.

(Hell, I'd also consider the folks at Enthought, who (like Jim and 
Ian) have built sizable systems atop setuptools and had to deal with 
a nice variety of end-user configuration quirks.  I would guess them 
to be equally requirements-educated and production-cautious.)

However, AFAIK, nobody qualified for the job of setuptools maintainer 
actually *wants* the position, myself included.  (This is not to say 
that such qualified persons do not exist, I'm just saying that I 
don't know of them at the moment.)

But lack of qualified volunteers is not me "preventing" anyone doing 
anything.  Obviously, I am not "preventing" anyone from forking it.