Re: Maintainer policy for GDB

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz at gnu dot org>]

> Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 17:41:38 -0500
> From: Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>
> 
> On Sat, Nov 19, 2005 at 12:33:38AM +0200, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> > > Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:46:20 -0500
> > > From: Daniel Jacobowitz <drow@false.org>
> > > Cc: Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com>, gdb@sourceware.org
> > > 
> > > Here's the counter question: if we force people to take the
> > > responsibility, why will they do a good job?
> > 
> > I wasn't suggesting to force a responsibility.  And we cannot enforce
> > it, anyway, under your suggestions, since being authorized means to
> > have the same rights with less duties.  We all are busy people, so
> > it's quite possible we will wind up with several authorized
> > maintainers and no responsible maintainers.
> 
> For that, all I have to offer you is that there's no way to end up as a
> global maintainer without accepting this responsibility.

(I think we are talking in circles.)  If becoming a global maintainer
won't give me anything, not even a T-shirt, why would I want to become
one?

In other words, some incentive, small as it may be, might help us
bring more responsible maintainers on board.  We should think about
something, some authority, that we leave to the global/responsible
maintainers and to them alone.  Something like design decisions,
perhaps, I dunno.

> If in practice it turns out we don't have anyone in this slot, I don't
> think the system will fall apart; although I think it would be better
> for GDB if we did have some.

Do others share this view?  Taking this to the extreme, can we
maintain GDB without any GM at all?  (Although, if there's no real
difference between ``authorized'' and ``responsible'' but the title,
perhaps the answer to this is trivial.)