Updated co-maintainership proposal -- guidelines

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 19.02.2007 10:47, Hans de Goede wrote:
> Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:
>> Comments?
> First of all let me say that I'm very happy that this has become a 
> "guidelines" document and not a set of hard rules.

That was always meant as such, but wasn't that clear earlier.

> I think the name 
> guidelines is wrong though, as currently we already have :
> * Packaging Guidelines
> * Package Naming Guidelines
> * Dist Tag Guidelines
> * Package Review Guidelines
> Which are must follow rules,  not "guidelines" as used in your proposal.

Well,
- maybe some native English speaker can come up with a better name, but 
"guidelines" seem to match the meaning of this stuff very well according 
to my English-German dictionary and my understanding of the English 
language.
- it's not my fault if the stuff from the Packaging Committee uses the 
wrong word ;-) But I think they used it on purpose, too, as a in some 
very *rare* situations parts of what is written there is wrong for a 
particular package and can be ignored.

> The new parts look good, I still see little value in the:
> "=== Don't (co-)maintain too many packages ===" and
> "=== Other aspects of co-maintainership ===" pieces, they make the whole 
> document way too long to read with little added value IMHO.

I think they are worth it. I want to get new contributors into the 
project and that is the first step into this direction for a alternative 
way. Sponsorship doesn't scale endlessly.

It doesn't work already anymore. Just imagine *me* wanting to start 
getting involved today (if I wouldn't have started years ago) -- I would 
not know what to package as everything I use or I'm interested in is 
packaged already. But I could start as a co-maintainer for another 
package, without access to the buildsystem and observed by the primary 
maintainer.

But if you have a better idea to get new people involved and grown up in 
Fedora Packaging lang: tell us, as I really think that's hardly needed, 
as otherwise we have a "open" Fedora (Core) sonn, that's only open to a 
small group (~300 people) of formally Extras packagers, but still closed 
to the rest of the world, as it doesn't find a way in. That would be 
nearly no improvement.

> One last note:
> " * co-maintainers all get listed in the last field in owners.list.
> Note: currently owners.list is locked-down so changes need to be
> requested through the wiki, but once the package database is live this
> limitation should be removed."
> 
> Aren't we changing the owners.list format, so that co-maintainers can be 
> listed in the owners field, clearly seperating maintainers and observers?

Yes, that need to be adjusted.

CU
thl