Co-maintainersip policy for Fedora Packages

[Thorsten Leemhuis]

Toshio Kuratomi schrieb:
> On Wed, 2007-01-24 at 13:31 -0500, Bill Nottingham wrote:
>> Thorsten Leemhuis (fedora at leemhuis.info) said: 
>>>>> Packages primary maintained by Red Hat employees should
>>>>> have at least one co-maintainer from the community. They should try to
>>>>> hand over certain regular maintain task to the the community; that
>>>>> should help getting the community involved everywhere and to get some
>>>>> load of the Red Hat employees so they can focus on more imporant things
>>>>> -- that's best for both sides!
>>>> How is this different than the rest of the policy? One community,
>>>> maintainers are maintainers, co-maintainers are co-maintainers. Trying
>>>> to draft specific policy based on locality seems like a bad idea to
>>>> me.
>>> I hope that para can vanish over time, but I think it's worth it for
>>> now, to make sure the community gets involved everywhere so the
>>> differences between red hat and community members then will hopefully
>>> nearly vanish.
>> <speaking very very much for myself, and no one else>
>>
>> OK, I'm getting tired of arguing this point with you. Your words say
>> it very clearly - 'make sure the community gets involved', 'differences
>> between red hat and community members'.
>>
>> What those words say to me is that you don't think people in Red Hat are
>> now, or can be part of the community - that the community is always
>> entirely separate. And, frankly, I find that offensive.
>>
>> If I want to co-maintain some game that Hans maintains, then I talk to
>> him, and it's irrelevant w.r.t. who signs his or my paycheck. If Josh
>> wants to co-maintain vte, then he talks to Behdad (or whomever), and
>> it's irrelevant who signs their paychecks.
>>
>> If there are trust or other issues with how things are maintained, let's
>> hear them. But I'm not going to have some policy that mandates actions
>> based on some caste system separating maintainers into different camps.
>>
>> <end rant>
> 
> I don't like requirements here or elsewhere that mandate "X of the
> community and Y from Red Hat" for mostly the same reasons as you, Bill.
> However, I think what Thorsten is trying to address in this policy is
> the fact that currently, there's a block of Red Hat packagers that
> aren't really integrated or interacting with the community that has
> evolved around Fedora Extras.  This is the cause of the Red Hat vs
> community mentality that has come out here.

Exactly. With one important addition:

There are a lot of (often vocal) users out there that say "Red Hat is
totally controlling Fedora and especially the important packages, thus
Fedora is not a community project and I don't want to contribute to it"
or "Red Hat is the Microsoft in the Linux world". We can't get those and
similar statements out of the world in the short term (probably never,
as Red Hat *has* certain influence in Fedora). But we could do some
small things and set clear signs here and there that show that those
statements are mostly false and that we are "The good guys". That could
improve our reputation and might make us a lot more attractive for
contributors.

The Core and Extras merge is such a good sign. But we need a bit more
and that merge must show that we mean it serious with the "Community
Project". Getting a lot of non-Red-Hat contributors as co-maintainers
for all the stuff that was known as "Fedora Core" until now *and* saying
"Red Hat might have a majority in the Fedora Project Board, but the
community has much influence there, too, and always has at least 50% of
the seats in FESCo which does the day-to-day for for the Fedora
distribution" are IMHO two clear signs we could and should set.

CU
thl

Disclaimer: I highly respect all the Red Hat developers (guys, you are
really doing a good job!) and the company and its politics. That's why
I'm contributing to Fedora. But it seems the view from the world is not
that positive, thus I think some small things like those outlines above
could help Fedora a lot!