Re: Maintainer policy for GDB

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz at gnu dot org>]

> Date: Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:34:33 -0800
> From: Jim Blandy <jimb@red-bean.com>
> Cc: gdb@sourceware.org
> 
> I would agree that it's unfair to give someone a responsibility
> without giving them the power to carry it out.  If we're doing that
> here, then we're making a mistake.

I most passionately agree, but I'm not sure everybody else shares our
agreement.

> But I don't think it's a good idea to grant exclusive authority as a
> reward for accepting responsibility.  I think contributors should earn
> authority informally, through their contributions and their
> participation in discussions.  If you work steadily, explain yourself
> well, and are easy to work with, then your words will carry weight
> that no set of rules could give them.  That is the sort of "position"
> that we should offer our contributors to aspire to.

Then why not give them the responsibility at the same time as we grant
the authority, and through the same informal process?  Under the
proposed rules, nothing is lost by not having responsible maintainers,
anyway.

> Official authority to make decisions should be restricted to people
> who have accumulated a track record of making good ones, and being
> easy to work with.  Those should be the only criteria.

Until now, the criteria for granting this authority were not spelled
out, and IIRC there was never a formal discussion whether a particular
candidate satisfied those criteria.  And the new rules don't propose
any formal procedure for this, either.

So we have no way of knowing whether the criteria you mention above
(to which I think I agree) are met in each individual case.  For
example, some of you might think that I fail the second requirement,
of being easy to work with; and yet here I am, being responsible and
solely authorized for maintaining the GDB documentation.

> Setting principle aside, in practice, our current rules ---
> specifically that only area maintainers may approve changes to their
> areas --- make exactly the tie between responsibility and authority
> that you're suggesting.  And that policy is a problem spot.

It's a different problem, though: some area maintainers are slow in
their response.  When the response time is short, there are no
problems whatsoever.  I think we should look for rules that improve on
the current situation without introducing new problems.