On Sun, 4 Jun 2006, Steven Bosscher wrote: > Maybe it would help clean up the long list of maintainers who don't > actually do any maintenance. Then, at last, you get a more fair > picture of the number of reviewers&maintainers that we really have.
Agreed. It will provide a clearer picture at least, though it won't solve the problem per se. (Among maintainers of specific parts, I think there aren't too many not doing anything about those parts. Write after approval is another story -- I guess we have at least a dozen of nominal members -- and global write does not necessarily reflect reality, either.) > With power comes responsibility. If you can't handle the > responsibility, you shouldn't accept the power. Being a maintainer > of some part of the compiler should be more than just being listed > in MAINTAINERS. If think nobody will disagree with the second sentence. However, we should account for periods of inactivity and reduced activity caused by personal issues, employer changes, illness, whatever. Other projects have a certain period of time (one year, eighteen months) after which inactive contributors are contacted and eventually purged, and I think we should do something similar. Also, when we talk about responsibility, let's be careful not to demand too much: just because someone is listed as a maintainer for foo, does not means her or she shall be responsible for each and every patch or bug in that area. Even fixing one bug a month and reviewing one patch a month is an important contribution. If this is not sufficient in a specific area, we need to try and get additional maintainers, not alienate existing ones. Gerald
