Re: [gentoo-dev] rfc: formally allow qa to suspend commit rights

[Tom Wijsman]

On Wed, 22 Jan 2014 02:58:45 -0800
Alec Warner <antarus@g.o> wrote:

> Of course it is. We want to send the message that if a person's
> contributions are not up to par, their access to commit to the
> project will be revoked, until they can prove that they can
> contribute at a level that is not detrimental to users or other
> developers. A large portion of the QA team's role in Gentoo is to
> define what 'par' means and at some level, get the community to agree
> with them.
>
> Developer mentorship, for example, generally requires that a
> prospective developer submits changes to their mentor and the mentor
> reviews them. Part of that process is to determine that prospective
> developers can contribute at the expected level and we have quizzes
> to try and verify that developers understand key facets of ebuild
> development. Certainly if a prospective developer routinely submits
> faulty ebuilds and doesn't show improvement, we are unlikely to grant
> them commit access.

True; becoming a developer goes further than obtaining access, it also
involves keeping that access. And everyone knows well enough that it
takes more than a single breakage to permanently lose that access; to
determine where the limits are, one can remember the case with
python-exec where you see that the developer is still around.

Permanently losing it thus takes quite a big effort; in comparison, a
temporary suspension is something rather helpful ("Oh, were I breaking
the tree? Thanks for preventing me from making further damage; sorry, I
forgot to check IRC and/or e-mails. What can we do to fix it?"),
temporary suspensions do not have to be worried about. 

-- 
With kind regards,

Tom Wijsman (TomWij)
Gentoo Developer

E-mail address  : TomWij@g.o
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