Gentoo Archives: gentoo-project

From: Raymond Jennings <shentino@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-project@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-project] How do you feel about non-contributing developers with commit access?
Date: Tue, 06 Nov 2018 05:13:10
Message-Id: CAGDaZ_pO0Gi2C2DzLmh9bVGQnSkuMiy1GFPUw=YeQU8=Dvo4ZA@mail.gmail.com
In Reply to: [gentoo-project] How do you feel about non-contributing developers with commit access? by "Sam Jorna (wraeth)"
1 On Mon, Nov 5, 2018 at 5:11 PM Sam Jorna (wraeth) <wraeth@g.o> wrote:
2 >
3 > On 3/11/18 2:05 am, Michał Górny wrote:
4 > > Hello,
5 > >
6 > > The Undertakers team has frequently received various forms of
7 > > 'criticism' of their effort in attempting to find and retire inactive
8 > > developers. This is getting as far as to claim that we shouldn't retire
9 > > anyone because there are no limits on commit slots.
10 > >
11 > > Therefore, I would like to ask the wider community a general question:
12 > > how do you feel about preserving commit access for people who no longer
13 > > actively commit to Gentoo? I'm talking about extreme cases, say,
14 > > no commits to any user-visible repository for over a year.
15 >
16 > Hello.
17 >
18 > I'd like to suggest that developers be allowed to retain commit
19 > privileges until and unless they are unresponsive to status queries or
20 > have demonstrated some kind of negative intent.
21
22 > I understand the concern of allowing commit access to persist for AWOL
23 > contributors, but for those with low commit frequency it's effectively
24 > saying "your volunteer contributions aren't enough".
25
26 And this is not in my opinion the kind of message we want to send,
27 unless we want gentoo to become an elitist that only welcomes people
28 who are "productive enough", which in my opinion also aggravates the
29 risk of burnout. Quite frankly, "you aren't active enough to deserve
30 to keep your developer status" is rather demoralizing, especially
31 since we aren't actually being paid to work on Gentoo, at least not
32 out of the Foundation's budget.
33
34 From what I know, the undertakers project already has procedures in
35 place for determining if a developer is inactive before they are
36 retired, and I think the same procedures would apply just as easily
37
38 > For myself, due to various factors my time for productive commit
39 > development is severely limited, but as I only maintain a couple of
40 > packages which, to my knowledge, don't have any issues, removing commit
41 > access just means those that I do maintain become orphaned, and when I
42 > do get time to work on something I have to work through GitHub or
43 > Bugzilla, increasing work for whichever developer is kind enough to
44 > facilitate my contribution. I am, however, able to be reached quickly,
45 > and responsive to queries.
46 >
47 > If a developer is present, is not neglecting anything they maintain, has
48 > not demonstrated any malicious intent, and is offering to spend what
49 > time they can on contributions when they have the time to ensure they
50 > don't break anything, why stop them?
51
52 I second this motion. Having been removed from proxy maintainers for
53 inactivity myself (and against my objections as well) I can speak to
54 the increased load of being made aware of future bugs in the projects
55 I used to work on. It adds unnecessary red tape to make developers
56 jump through hoops to contribute.
57
58 At the very least, once someone has passed muster with recruiters and
59 whatnot they shouldn't have to do a heap of paperwork just to get back
60 in. Maybe email once every few months to see if they're still
61 responsive, and a quick check to make sure their SSH/GPG keys are
62 still
63 valid and that there are no technical issues, but I oppose any changes
64 in one's status as a developer just on inactivity alone.
65
66 Also, I would like to advance an example I personally encountered:
67
68 What if there's simply nothing for the developer to do? Like if for
69 example they're maintaining a package that's gone quiet upstream but
70 which doesn't have any bugs open against it either?
71
72 No, this doesn't include the idle developer simply finding a neglected
73 area of gentoo to work on instead. The pool of available work to
74 perform is still going to be finite, and on top of that the areas of
75 gentoo needing attention when another area stops giving developers
76 something to do may simply be outside their expertise.
77
78 If someone has proven they can contribute and be trusted they
79 shouldn't be removed in my opinion. As long as they aren't slacking
80 off or sabotaging the distro. Going AWOL /with/ outstanding work on
81 your desk, such as open bugs against packages you maintain? That is
82 more serious and should probably warrant attention from the
83 undertakers. But just going quiet period? Not so much since their
84 absence isn't hurting Gentoo. The question is: is their retention of
85 access causing harm to gentoo or obstructing development?
86
87 If they answer their emails from the undertakers that should be good
88 enough assuming they haven't actively gone against Gentoo.
89
90 I would also like to ask:
91
92 Why should we remove them in the first place? As far as I know,
93 letting people keep developer status and commit access doesn't burden
94 Gentoo unduly.
95
96 * If they're contributing, the overhead of incorporating their
97 contributions is an investment
98 * If they're not contributing, but haven't done anything harmful, then
99 there's no burden
100 * If they're harming the distro then they can be removed whether
101 they're a burden or not.
102
103 > Thanks;
104 > --
105 > Sam Jorna (wraeth)
106 > GPG ID: 0xD6180C26
107 >

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