Re: Maintainer policy for GDB

[Michael Snyder <msnyder@redhat.com>]

I sincerely hope to forward the discussion toward, rather than
away from convergence.  These are casual suggestions; if anyone
thinks they're too daft, I'll happily withdraw them.

1) Unique approval authority.

How about this -- if there's to be a specific maintainer with
sole approval authority for certain areas, there'll have to be
a list of them somewhere: presumably in the MAINTAINERS file
or equivalent.

What if each such area maintainer has the right to spell out
his or her own policy as far as "timeouts", etc.?  Rather than
forcing a one-size-fits-all policy?  Eg.:

     Area Maintainers:
	gdb/doc: Eli Zaretskii.
	    Checkin policy: "I prefer that any changes other
	    than obvious fixes await my explicit approval for
	    at least 3 weeks".
	mumble mumble: Daniel Jacobowitz
	    Checkin policy: "If I haven't responded within
	    3-5 days, any global maintainer may approve."

2) Reverting a patch

There hasn't been too much discussion of this, but it
makes me nervous.  May I throw this out on the table?
How about if, except for area maintainers, it requires
the agreement of at least two maintainers to revert
another maintainer's patch?

To be perfectly clear, that means that if someone
checks in a docs patch that Eli doesn't like, Eli
can yank it out immediately, but other than Eli it
would require a motion and a second.