Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: Project proposal -- maintainer-wanted

[Mart Raudsepp]

On N, 2009-05-14 at 14:02 +0300, Markos Chandras wrote:
> On Thursday 14 May 2009 03:32:12 Mart Raudsepp wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I have had this project in my mind for a while, so it's about time to
> >[..]
> I think there is no need for this project. Developers can always browse
> bugzilla  and pick every 'maintainer-wanted' ebuild they like. At least this
> is what I do.  I am not sure how this project will make things better. In
> order to push something on portage,  you need to test it and use it and like
> it and taking care of it. Apparently you wont push a package that you dont
> give a s*** :)
> So this project will do what each developer is doing individually. Am I the
> only one who is searching bugzilla for maintainer-wanted packages? o_0


There are various differences with this being a project instead of
individual developers picking up a few. I think most are benefits, but
some can be perhaps viewed the opposite way as well, hence the thread :)

It is a project and hence a team, so there can be multiple developers in
the team, all sharing the workload and making sure quality and
up-to-dateness is kept. A separate e-mail alias to get bug reports to
that any of the team members can attend to, etc. Basically the typical
benefits of a team vs individuals

The packages are still kept up for grabs for individual packages.
Instead of you looking for packages of interest to maintain from
bugzilla maintainer-wanted ones, you have an additional place to look at
- one that would be more easily browseable and categorized. If you find
a package of interest you would like to maintain out of that list, you
simply take over maintenance from maintainer-wanted team, as finding a
dedicated is exactly the eventual goal and that gets accomplished then.
Meanwhile users have the package available earlier.

Liking and using the package yourself shouldn't be a prerequisite for a
package getting to be in-tree by the maintainer-wanted team. It is hoped
that for them the driving factor is making popular packages available to
a larger user base that want to use it themselves, so that popular
applications that do not have any existing developers at the time
finding deep interest in it will not mean indefinite languishing in
bugzilla and not being easily available for users (while it probably is
for Fedora or Debian or whatever).

I'm quite sure we have developers motivated by that around. For example
when I discussed this with Samuli a few months ago, I believe he
basically said to already do work like this, except making desktop-misc
the dumping ground, loosing the benefits that a separate project and
alias would give related to both implied (from the maintaining herd name
and knowledge of its purpose) and active seeking (through package lists,
etc) for dedicated maintainers.


-- 
Mart Raudsepp
Gentoo Developer
Mail: leio@g.o
Weblog: http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/leio