Re: commit access policies

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   Tier Three: Anyone in the world, who is free to submit patches for
   consideration.

   Tier Two: People who have bits to commit to the archive, and can
   have their own branches, but should only commit pre-approved
   patches to the main trunk.

I really dislike having a bunch of branches for each and every person.
Either have a generic branch for tier twos (like ams-branch), or have
a branch based on a major feature that is being worked on.

   Tier One: Full access.

There is only one person with full access right now, Roland.  Not even
you belong here I think (Roland did bite your ass once or twice when
you commited something, though I do not recall the circumstances so
maybe you do belong there), Marcus also doesn't belong to this class.

   The advantage of this model is that people who are trusted to
   follow the commit policy, who can be trusted not to hose the CVS
   server or raise major headaches for maintenance, can be given
   commit access in Tier Two.

I think this should be asked from anyone with commit access, be it
tire three, tire two or tire one.

   Projects such as those Alfred thinks are more usual, have only
   tiers One and Three, with no Tier Two.

Since Tier two is in the same category as Tier one.

   The result is that people who have not yet earned the confidence
   that Tier One implies have to be denied commit access entirely.

You put a to strong weight on what Tier one should imply.  Not hosing
the tree, and causing trouble for other is quite good cirteria for
anyone who has commit access no matter what Tier they belong to.  If
you trust someone to not hose the tree or cause trouble for others,
then they should be given commit access.

   Alfred is incorrect that every other project has only Tiers One and
   Three.

I never claimed that, I can think of one notable example: gcc.

   Tier Two people who want to be in Tier One should just ask.  At
   this point, I think Alfred has proved his ability to do the
   necessary tasks of Tier One maintenance, and I would ask that if we
   move him up to Tier One, he agree to start shouldering the burden
   of reviewing patches from those in tiers Two and Three.

I almost feel insulted, since I have been doing that burden of
reviewing patches for the past few years, not you. ;)

   1) He seemed to me to be saying that he was going to move from Tier
      Two to Tier One on his own say-so alone.

No, if it was my own say-so alone then I would have been committing
things to the GNU Mach 1.x tree already.  It was on the say-so of the
lack of a say-so from the maintainers.  But since there was a say-so
from someone who isn't even the maintainer, the claim that it was done
on my own say so is simply false.

(Does that make sense?)

   2) He seemed to me to be saying that at the same time he was going
      to declare that everyone in Tier Two was now in Tier One.

Yes.

   3) He seemed to me to be saying that he was not willing to shoulder
      the burden of maintainership or reviewing patches at the same
      time.

No.  Everyone should share the burden with each other.  If I commit a
broken patch, and Marco complains, then I should fix it unless Marco
is cute enough to do it for me. The same goes for Marco, or anyone
else.  Simple.  It reduces the time to get good patches committed, and
it reduces the overall responsibility of a maintainer including the
burden without compromising the quality of patches that go in.

   But this goes along with Alfred *not* deciding that he can
   eliminate Tier Two on his say-so alone.

I have done that for ams-branch.  I hope you will not dictate what
kind of policies I can set for "my" branches (I do not consider
ams-branch my branch, despite the name of the branch).

   If we are to eliminate Tier Two, then we need to go through the
   existing people in that class, one by one, and decide which should
   be moved to Three and which should be moved to One.  I do not
   accept that everyone in Tier Two should all be moved to Tier One
   without any review.

Why not?  They should be willing to get their asses chewed if they
commit something that is simply broken or unacceptable.  And
revert/fix whatever they broke.  And if they continue to be silly they
should get a warning (like committing totally unteseted patches all
the time), then they should really hide somewhere.  It once again
boils down to taking responsibility for whatever you commit.

So yeah, I prefer a two tier based system over three tier based
systems, since in tier three based system tier one is utterly small,
lazy, and unresponsive.  While in tier two systems people can still
work on stuff without getting bothered by the lazyness of the
maintainers.