[gentoo-project] Re: [gentoo-dev-announce] call for agenda items for 2020-01-12 council meeting

[Piotr Karbowski]

Hi,

On 30/12/2019 00.30, William Hubbs wrote:
> All,
>
> the Gentoo Council will meet on 2020-01-12 at 19:00 utc in the
> #gentoo-council channel on freenode.
>
> Please reply to this message with any items you would like us to add
> to the agenda.

I'd like to request Council to define rules regarding maintainership
boundaries and provide guidance regarding under what conditions one is
allowed to make changes to packages that are by metadata.xml maintained
by another party.

The current situation is land of undefined rules and double standards
under disguise of 'common sense'. Although it does work for most part,
it's not uncommon to come across people that are overly territorial,
treating Gentoo packages as their own personal property, who openly
prohibit others from joining them as maintainers on packages, with the
solo reasoning that they feel territorial and do not want others
touching it.

This leads to a situations, where some bugs reported on bugzilla are not
fixed in timely fashion, even when there are other developers that are
willing to fix those bugs and deal with whatever aftermath of doing
those changes would bring.

Because those rules are unsanctioned, we have land of middle
inconvenience where one can never be sure if by declaring maintainer
fimeout and fixing a bug would not bring ComRel on him, for touching the
package one does not maintain. By defining rules and guidelines, it
would greatly benefit Gentoo as a whole as well as reduce the
frustration that come from dealing with people who are gate keeping
while being unable to provide a valid reason why they do not want anyone
toucing their property.

-- Piotr.