Updated co-maintainership proposal -- guidelines

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

On 19.02.2007 13:09, Hans de Goede wrote:
 > [...]
> About there not being much interesting stuff left to package, I 
> disagree.

I did not say there isn't interesting stuff left to package. I'd say 
there isn't any stuff left to package that *I* would be interested in. 
And IMHO people should normally only package stuff that they are 
interested in and use. Otherwise the package quality might not be the 
best in the end.

And most of the "mainstream" stuff is packaged these days afaics.

> [...] But I
> agree that it would be usefull to have a different entry path. The 
> problem here is, that most of us are currently maximally loaded with FE 
> "work", thus if we get co-maintainers we (I) don't want that to cause 
> any additional work, the concept of co-maintainers should lower the 
> actual workload of the primary maintainer.

Exactly. But we have a lot of contributors already that are probably 
willing to take over some packagers from you. You just have to ask. Just 
remember when I became FESCO chair -- I had a lot more packages then and 
simply asked on the list "Hey, does anyone want to take over packages 
foo, bar and baz"? Some people showed up and took them over. They grew 
up in the Project. At least one of them is sponsor now (two iirc).

Sure, some of the new packagers made errors -- that happens. But they 
learned from it, grew up in the project and now are better maintainers, 
and that is good for the project as a whole.

So in this case and with co-maintainership it should work like this 
IMHO: you ask existing maintainers if they want to take over some of 
your packages. Some will find new owners. Those of the new owners could 
share the load with co-maintainers. Those new owners eventually become 
sponsors or get involved in other areas of the project in one or two 
years from now, and some of the new co-maintainers become real package 
owners. Then the cycle starts anew.

> I myself would like to see a 
> couple of people who will be able to take a bunch of the more simple 
> packages of my hand, and that I then become the co-maintainer, watching 
> over their shoulder for a while to catch any grave mistakes.

+1 (ans that exactly is written in one of the sections of the 
co-maintainership guidelines)

CU
thl