New Package Process

[Elliot Lee]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005, John Dennis wrote:

> On Wed, 2005-04-27 at 15:10 -0400, Elliot Lee wrote:
> > We /have/ to have someone who is ultimately held accountable for making
> > the package work. That's all the package maintainer is.
> 
> Who is going to want to be held accountable for changes they didn't make
> or approve? 

You make it sound like they'll go to jail if the package fails review. :)

If someone checks in a change that the maintainer doesn't want, then the
maintainer gets to teach that person the right way to do things, and fix
the problem. Encouraging contributions means responding constructively to
people's failures as well as their successes.

So in other words, if you aren't willing to be accountable for the output
of all the contributors to the package, you aren't the right person to be
the lead maintainer for a package. There's nothing wrong with not wanting
to be the leader if that's not your thing, but with the power of being
leader comes the responsibility of making other contributors successful.

Best,
-- Elliot