Proposal for revitalizing the sponsorship process for packaging

[Alec Leamas]

On 04/26/2012 01:18 PM, Nelson Marques wrote:
> No dia 26 de Abril de 2012 01:08, Stephen Gallagher
> <sgallagh at redhat.com>  escreveu:
>> On Wed, 2012-04-25 at 22:43 +0000, "Jóhann B. Guðmundsson" wrote:
>>> Why not just drop the sponsorship process and just raise the barrier of
>>> entry for the packaging process instead?
>>>
>>> Like having to have been a comaintainer for atleast one release cycle
>>> then completed x many reviews in the next etc. ( essentally what you
>>> propose there just without the "sponsor" ) and finally you are
>>> maintaining your own package or if we drop that outdated ownership model
>>> we have in place are free to roam "free" in the packaging community and
>>> assist when ever, where ever possible...
>> This approach completely disregards the very common example of "I'm an
>> upstream maintainer of a cool project. I want to package and maintain it
>> for Fedora." Under your approach, they'd first have to become involved
>> in other projects before being allowed to add their package. This is
>> unacceptable and would basically guarantee that no upstream would
>> willingly involve itself with Fedora.
> I was asked by a upstream to maintain a package for Fedora due to the
> high demand it has from Fedora users, unfortunatly I backed down from
> the proposal for several purposes:
>
[cut]

Still, besides this sad experience, isn't this the kind of cooperation 
we should encourage? Now and then those great people with great apps 
want their app in Fedora. Instead of saying "Wonderful, welcome", we 
send them a list of an actually quite complicated set of requirements to 
become a packager. But those people don't  want that, they just want 
their application packaged. And although they havn't the packaging 
skills, they know their app. And that's actually a damned good starting 
point.

What I'm talking about is  to tell these great people that there are two 
ways to get their app packaged. One way is to become a packager, and so 
far this discussion is about that path,. Obviously, the requirements 
here are beyond knowing an app, though.

The other way should be to find, persuade  (bribe?) a packager to take 
care of the package in cooperation with the developer. As I understand 
it, there is no such path today(?)  I think it's a pity, because the 
cooperation between a developer and a packager is actually a good way of 
doing it.

Just my 5 öre ;)

--alec