Re: Maintainer policy for GDB

[Jim Blandy <jimb@red-bean.com>]

On 11/18/05, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:
> It goes without saying that the responsibility should be taken
> voluntarily, not forced upon the volunteer.  But even a volunteer gets
> some unique authority that is part of the job she's taken.  For
> example, in projects where there's a head maintainer, only that person
> gets to make some decisions, and that person's agreement is needed to
> do certain things.  Here you have an example of a contributing
> volunteer who, as part of her job, gets authority not shared by
> others.

Yes, this is what I thought you meant.

I would agree that it's unfair to give someone a responsibility
without giving them the power to carry it out.  If we're doing that
here, then we're making a mistake.

But I don't think it's a good idea to grant exclusive authority as a
reward for accepting responsibility.  I think contributors should earn
authority informally, through their contributions and their
participation in discussions.  If you work steadily, explain yourself
well, and are easy to work with, then your words will carry weight
that no set of rules could give them.  That is the sort of "position"
that we should offer our contributors to aspire to.

Official authority to make decisions should be restricted to people
who have accumulated a track record of making good ones, and being
easy to work with.  Those should be the only criteria.

Setting principle aside, in practice, our current rules ---
specifically that only area maintainers may approve changes to their
areas --- make exactly the tie between responsibility and authority
that you're suggesting.  And that policy is a problem spot.