amending the new package process

[Matthew Miller]

On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 04:37:22PM +0100, Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos wrote:
> > > > And there is nothing wrong with review swaps. You help others,
> > > > they help you.
> > > That's good for you, but unacceptable to me. That way we penalize people
> > > who add packages.
> > Penalize in what sense? 
> In the sense, that in addition to packaging something new you have to
> review something else in order to get your new package in. If reviewing
> is voluntary it should affect every packager the same, not just the ones
> who bring new packages.

I think there's another aspect here which hasn't been mentioned.
Generally, Fedora's policy compliance mechanisms are based on _initial
gating_. That is, we have a really strict package review, but once a
package is in, you can deviate from the guidelines like crazy and we
have no ongoing process to catch that, and only ad-hoc approaches for
correcting something gone really wrong.

Basically, once a package is in, we rely on trust in its maintainer.
And, this extends a step out to package maintainers themselves — we
have a high initial bar to getting a package in, but once you're
sponsored, we assign a great deal of trust.

So, in some respects, the incredibly painful process works
_intentionally_ to weed out contributors who aren't serious enough to
get over that hurdle, on the theory that those who do stay and surmount
it have earned a certain level of project merit and trust.

Now, I'm not saying that this is the best possible approach — or even
that it really works. But I think it _is_ an important angle.

-- 
Matthew Miller
<mattdm at fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader