On Tue, 3 Jun 2025 at 11:21, Richard Sandiford via Gcc <gcc@gcc.gnu.org> wrote: > > Hi, > > At the moment, all reviewers and maintainers have to be appointed by the > Steering Committee. I wonder if we could add a second, more community-based > route: someone can be appointed as a reviewer or maintainer with the agreement > of a given number of people who already have an equal or greater remit.
Sounds like a good idea to me, with whatever details to be worked out (I'm fine with your strawman process proposal, or Richi's suggestion for more transparency, I don't have a strong opinion either way). This seems like letting the existing maintainers and the community manage the day-to-day running of the project, and only involve the SC to "make major decisions" (as the docs say they do). > > It's already possible for reviewers or maintainers to defer to the > opinion of someone they trust and rubber-stamp that other person's > review or patch. Having the ability to appoint the other person as a > co-reviewer or co-maintainer of that area is really just replacing > patch-by-patch trust with a more ongoing trust. > > If that seems a bit woolly, and if a more formally defined process > seems necessary, then how about this strawman: > > * Someone can be nominated to be a reviewer of an area by sending a > private email to every reviewer and maintainer who covers a non-strict > superset of that area. The nomination is approved if it is supported > by at least two such reviewers or maintainers and if there are no > objections. People would be given at least a week to respond. > > * The process would be the same for maintainers, with the same set of > addressees, except that there must already be at least one maintainer > for that area and, in addition to the previous requirements, all such > maintainers must be in favour. > > (So if the area is maintained by one person, the nomination would > need the support of that maintainer and at least one reviewer of a > wider area. If the area is maintained by two of more people, they > would all need to agree.) > > The idea with making it private is that it allows for a more honest > discussion. But the convention could be to have a public discussion > instead, if that seems better. > > Like I say, this would just be a second, alternative route. It would > still be possible to ask the SC instead. > > In case it sounds otherwise, I'm really not trying to pick a fight here. > I just don't remember this being discussed on-list for a long time, > so it seemed worth bringing up. (Maybe it has been discussed at the > Cauldron -- not sure.) > > Thanks, > Richard
