From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 1590 invoked by alias); 19 Nov 2005 00:34:38 -0000 Received: (qmail 1578 invoked by uid 22791); 19 Nov 2005 00:34:35 -0000 Received: from zproxy.gmail.com (HELO zproxy.gmail.com) (64.233.162.195) by sourceware.org (qpsmtpd/0.30-dev) with ESMTP; Sat, 19 Nov 2005 00:34:35 +0000 Received: by zproxy.gmail.com with SMTP id x3so315340nzd for ; Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:34:33 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.37.2.71 with SMTP id e71mr346859nzi; Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:34:33 -0800 (PST) Received: by 10.37.2.35 with HTTP; Fri, 18 Nov 2005 16:34:33 -0800 (PST) Message-ID: <8f2776cb0511181634g34f855ddw1f54a76930ecf373@mail.gmail.com> Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 00:34:00 -0000 From: Jim Blandy To: Eli Zaretskii Subject: Re: Maintainer policy for GDB Cc: gdb@sourceware.org In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline References: <20051117140353.GA11432@nevyn.them.org> <20051118030711.GB31581@nevyn.them.org> <20051118152618.GB9100@nevyn.them.org> <20051118185135.GA13986@nevyn.them.org> <8f2776cb0511181351k6aba28f7m5223956e4f84f46@mail.gmail.com> Mailing-List: contact gdb-help@sourceware.org; run by ezmlm Precedence: bulk List-Subscribe: List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: , Sender: gdb-owner@sourceware.org X-SW-Source: 2005-11/txt/msg00414.txt.bz2 On 11/18/05, Eli Zaretskii wrote: > It goes without saying that the responsibility should be taken > voluntarily, not forced upon the volunteer. But even a volunteer gets > some unique authority that is part of the job she's taken. For > example, in projects where there's a head maintainer, only that person > gets to make some decisions, and that person's agreement is needed to > do certain things. Here you have an example of a contributing > volunteer who, as part of her job, gets authority not shared by > others. Yes, this is what I thought you meant. 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. 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. 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. 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.