Subject: Re: [PATCH] RFC: add MAINTAINERS file

From: Patrick Steinhardt <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2024 08:22:09 +0200

On Sat, Mar 30, 2024 at 10:59:53AM -0700, Linus Arver wrote:
> Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]> writes:
> 
> > Linus Arver <[email-masked]> writes:
> >
> >> I realize that such an idea is beyond the scope of a simple MAINTAINERS
> >> (or similar) file that's checked into the Git code repo, but I think
> >> it's worth stating as a thought experiment.
> >
> > As we already have agreed that neither of us care the exact format
> > of the file (yet), regardless of how a contributor, who is about to
> > send a patch, will find an area "maintainer" to help the patch along
> > the process, it is far more important to discuss and decide what
> > responsibilities and authorities are expected of these maintainers.
> 
> I'm starting to think that the new responsibility should be as small as
> possible, and build from there. So the smallest bit of (initial?)
> responsibility expected of the new roster of maintainers could be
> "maintainer must respond to CC pings on the list within 7 days".
> 
> For those who have more time to spend on the project, the next rung of
> responsibility could be "maintainer is available to review patches
> outside of their domain of expertise if no one else has reviewed the
> series in 7 days".
> 
> I haven't thought too much about the "authority" part yet.

One thing that makes me feel a bit uneasy about the authority part is
that contributors to Git are quite often direct competitors on the
company level, as well. This never has been a problem in the past, quite
on the contrary: I really value the cross-competitor collaboration we
have in this project.

But I have to wonder what it can potentially lead to if we did assign
more authority to some contributors. Theoretically speaking, that would
allow for sabotaging interests of a direct competitor.

Mind you, I don't think this would happen in the current state of the
project. I'm merely trying to think about worst-case scenarios, which
may or may not be helpful in this context.

Patrick

> > The development community has been fairly loosely organized so far,
> > but I'd like to see responsibility and authority spread a bit more
> > widely yet still not too thinly to compromise the project integrity.
> 
> Agreed.