Dropping the ownership model

[Henrik Nordström]

tis 2011-11-22 klockan 17:51 +0000 skrev "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson":
> What do people see as pros and cons continuing to use the current 
> package ownership model?

ownership is some times misappropriated with others doing all the work,
but it's also of little practical meaning in the end.

Would probably make sense to drop the separate ownership indication as
such in favor of only using approveacls as ownership indicatior. This
allows for a more diversified ownership and smoother transitions in
ownership.

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

no, but perhaps opening up git access a bit would, allowing packagers to
commit changes to any package just not submit a non-scratch build for
packages they are not approved on. But there may need some safeguards to
alert provenpackagers if there is pending changes not yet officially
built in a package they are modifying as part of a mass rebuild or other
cleanup, but such safeguards probably makes sense no matter who made
those changes for whatever reason as even assigned maintainers of the
package may have committed changes not quite ready for release yet.

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

I would argue that the mechanisms needed for a SIG to use this model is
pretty much in place already by making use of the co-maintainer route.

There is also a lot of packages which do not fit in any particular SIG
in that sense.

> So basically the barrier of entry is no higher than what the individual 
> wants to learn or knows already as in..

And in reality it isn't. The barriers are mostly an illusion.

There is a very high barrier for entering the packaging group by
submitting a new package, and that barrier should be high to review the
quality of that package and it's packaging. But the barrier for entering
as a co-maintainer is only to show interest, skill and communication.

Interested SIGs could do a great job in attracting co-maintainers to the
packages they care about by setting up co-maintainership as a goal for
the SIG. It should be quite visible to the any active SIG when there is
people who may be suitable candidates for co-maintaing their packages.
Reach out and invite people!

Regards
Henrik