Re: Maintainer policy for GDB

[Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org>]

> Cc: gdb@sourceware.org
> From: Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com>
> Date: 18 Nov 2005 10:44:05 -0800
> 
> If you are "responsible" for patch review in a specific area, it means
> that you have promised that you will review all patches in that area
> in a reasonably timely fashion.
> 
> If you are "authorized" to commit patches in a specific area, it means
> that you can commit patches without anybody else's approval.

Thanks, I think I understand now.  What fooled me was that Daniel said
"authority to review patches", not "authority to commit patches".  And
since almost anyone can comment on a patch posted to gdb-patches, it
wasn't clear what kind of authority we were talking about.

> At least in the U.S., anybody is "authorized" to make a citizen's
> arrest if they see a crime being committted.  But only the police are
> "responsible" for doing so.  If a civilian sees a crime being
> committed and does nothing, nothing happens to the civilian.  If a
> policeman sees a crime being committed and does nothing, he gets fired
> from his job.

But, unless I'm mistaken, Daniel didn't suggest to ``fire'' the
responsible person(s) in our case, did he?  So the analogy is not
really full; in particular, what kind of responsibility is that if you
aren't going to be fired for failing to do that for which you are
responsible?