Re: gnulib maintainers

[Bruno Haible]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> >> + Gnulib is currently being maintained by
> 
> > _Currently_? Counting the number of people who have contributed more than
> > 10 ChangeLog entries
> 
> As I understand it the "Maintainers" entry is for the official
> maintainers, which is sometimes distinct from the people who are
> actually doing the work.  Perhaps we should update the list of
> official maintainers, though.

Recall that the official list of maintainers of a GNU project is a group
of people that RMS nominates because he trusts them. RMS once wrote to me
(talking about CLISP):

  RMS:
    It is fine to have a group of people working on the project
    technically, but there needs to be a person in charge who makes sure
    that the GNU Project goals and policies are not forgotten.  If we pick
    a bunch of people out of the community, selected for technical
    interest in CLISP, it's unlikely they would take responsibility for
    that.  So we have to appoint maintainers to be in charge, not just let
    people volunteer themselves.

In other words, a GNU project cannot update its list of official maintainers
as it wants.

But since here it's about the web pages, i.e. the public's notion of
maintainers, not about RMS's notion of "maintainers", I'm in favour of
changing the web pages to reflect the maintainers by contribution, rather
than the maintainers by nomination.

Bruno