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>>>>> On Sun, 05 Jan 2020, Piotr Karbowski wrote: |
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> I'd like to request Council to define rules regarding maintainership |
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> boundaries and provide guidance regarding under what conditions one is |
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> allowed to make changes to packages that are by metadata.xml maintained |
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> by another party. |
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> The current situation is land of undefined rules and double standards |
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> under disguise of 'common sense'. Although it does work for most part, |
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> it's not uncommon to come across people that are overly territorial, |
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> treating Gentoo packages as their own personal property, who openly |
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> prohibit others from joining them as maintainers on packages, with the |
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> solo reasoning that they feel territorial and do not want others |
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> touching it. |
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> This leads to a situations, where some bugs reported on bugzilla are not |
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> fixed in timely fashion, even when there are other developers that are |
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> willing to fix those bugs and deal with whatever aftermath of doing |
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> those changes would bring. |
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> Because those rules are unsanctioned, we have land of middle |
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> inconvenience where one can never be sure if by declaring maintainer |
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> fimeout and fixing a bug would not bring ComRel on him, for touching the |
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> package one does not maintain. By defining rules and guidelines, it |
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> would greatly benefit Gentoo as a whole as well as reduce the |
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> frustration that come from dealing with people who are gate keeping |
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> while being unable to provide a valid reason why they do not want anyone |
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> toucing their property. |
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This has been discussed a number of times in the past. I believe that |
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the best current practice is outlined in the devmanual: |
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https://devmanual.gentoo.org/general-concepts/package-maintainers/#maintainer-authority |
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Also, "request Council to define rules" normally isn't going to work, |
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because chances are that the Council won't see this as an actionable |
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item. So, if you want the rules to be changed (or better defined), |
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then it will work much better if you come up with a concrete proposal |
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and discuss it on the mailing list. |
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Ulrich |
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