Lack of response about sponsorship

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 19 Oct 2013 16:22:58 -0600, Kevin Fenzi wrote:

> On Fri, 18 Oct 2013 16:31:49 -0600 Ken Dreyer wrote:
> 
> > If this really is the consensus of the Fedora community, then I would
> > prefer that the guidelines on the wiki be specifically amended to
> > require this. IMHO the language in the guidelines is simply too vague
> > about this point.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_Review_Process
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Package_Review_Process#Reviewer

 | If it is the first package of a Contributor, the Reviewer must be
 | in the Sponsor group and be willing to sponsor that Contributor.

Hard to read that wrong.

But although it's a MUST, not all new packagers join that way. There have
always been ways to get sponsored without submitting a package into the
review queue.

For those, who submit a single package (with mistakes) and wait patiently
for a sponsor, joining becomes much more difficult. It becomes even more
difficult, if the person waits several months without even attempting to
contribute a single review or a self-review of the submitted package.

Other people (not limited to Red Hat employees) simply request becoming a
co-maintainer in the sponsor's trac instance and sort of get blanket
approval, i.e. some sponsor quickly accepts them without that they have to
prove knowing the packaging guidelines or contributing a few reviews.

> Yeah, we should clarify where things are not clear... 

A few years ago we've been much better at talking about things and
coming to a conclusion. Nowadays I have the feeling "the community"
is fragmented too much. With some people avoiding mailing-lists like
the plague, some people lurking on IRC only, other people preferring
web based forums, others addressing topics in personal blogs or during
hallway meetings (and similar face-to-face situations).

I've added a long comment to the following blog post:
http://eischmann.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/does-fedora-project-want-new-packagers/

> How about anytime someone (who is not a sponsor) has helped someone not
> yet sponsored and thinks their package(s) are ready for official
> review/sponsorship, they mail the pool of sponsors asking for someone
> to step up and do so? Or we add another state sponsors could query for
> this?

In many cases, I don't find it easy to tell whether a new package
submitter knows the packaging guidelines (or looks them up actively
at all) or follows the "Join" process for packagers. A few words in
bugzilla could be helpful, or else the potential sponsor needs to
ask lots of questions (in bugzilla or in private mail) only to learn
that basic tools, such as rpmlint, have not been used. If there's
only a single package to evaluate and the submitters doesn't have
any interest in co-maintaining some other package, that doesn't
make it easy either.