Updated co-maintainership proposal -- guidelines

[Michael Schwendt]

On Mon, 19 Feb 2007 12:58:14 +0100, Thorsten Leemhuis wrote:

[...]

> 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.

Laughable.

Most likely you just look in the wrong places. There are lots of open bug
reports, lots of upstream bugs, lots of packages, which need more than
throw-in-a-tarball-and-build updates, tools that are missing, insufficient
man-power. And:

We do have co-maintainership possibilities. We do have the sponsorship
system. Any external contributor may join Fedora based on the same
principles we've used in conjunction with Fedora Core for a very long
time. Contributions in bugzilla and/or via closer contact with package
maintainers. With Fedora Extras it is even easier, as its open to the
community already. "Open" as in you can sign up for access.

All that is needed are the actual contributions and the sponsors who are
willing to let active contributors join even if they don't do reviews and
if they own only a single package. The next logical step is to let them
join if they are competent with regard to an existant package and when
they team up with its primary owner. I welcome everyone, who contributes
patches, testing, careful upgrades and similar stuff that needs to be done
and where Fedora packagers as well as upstream developers can need help.

It may be that some packages are almost free of maintenance requirements,
and a single person can package dozens of them. But many aren't, because
they are full of pitfalls and bugs. They would benefit from team-work.
Team-work that starts *prior* to publishing [ABI/API-incompatible] version
upgrades, which break other packages.

Where is the updated/adjusted "How to become a Contributor" page?
With ACLs at package-level, package owners could become sponsors for
co-maintainers.