Dropping the ownership model

[Michael Schwendt]

On Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:51:31 +0000, JBG (Jóhann) wrote:

> What do people see as pros and cons continuing to use the current 
> package ownership model?

Understand a package's owners as some sort of micro-SIG. The people who
sign up as a package's team of owners are the ones who want to be
responsible for the package. They also take responsibility for false
decisions.

And someone (!) needs to decide on whether and when to upgrade, for
example. This cannot be an arbitrary person, who doesn't show any interest
in a package or its upstream status, but would jump in and perform a
random upgrade just because a newer version is available. Or apply
fire'n'forget changes without monitoring user feedback (e.g. in bz).
It doesn't make sense to try out such a development model.

> Would it be practical to dropping it altogether which in essence would 
> make every contributor an "proven packager"?

More difficult to answer. Yes, I think it would be feasible. Many
packagers would simply not mess with packages they are not familiar
with. They could, but they would not take care of arbitrary packages
just because those are group-writable.

> Would it be viable to move to something like language SIG based 
> ownership of packages?

(language => programming language?)  Then: No. Somebody, who is fluent in C++,
does not automatically know the details of arbitrary libs and apps written
in C++. And even if you know a certain lib or app rather well, it might be
that a fix would require larger code changes better done by the developer(s).
That also why many packagers consider themselves plain packagers and not
full "package maintainers".

> Do you know or want to learn python. Join the python SIG etc...

Nothing stops anyone from learning Python and learning about Fedora's
Python related packages.
 
> Do you want to learn distribution packaging join the Packaging SIG

Same here.
 
> Or the individual would learn how to package components relevant to the 
> SIG he just joined
> 
> Thoughts?

Membership is only useful if you need it to gain access to something.
Once you've figured out what you want to change and where, you can ask for
access _today_. Fedora is open enough. You need to talk to someone 
(e.g. an open list), however, as blanket-approval for unknown changes
to arbitrary packages or infrastructure is unlikely to happen. ;)