Re: A summary of some open discussions

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > We have started to recognize people as having release-upload rights, even 
if
   > they aren't formal maintainers (this is really fairly recent and so far 
has been
   > handled on a case-by-case basis).

   Is there a need to distinguish "releasers" and "maintainers"? I would say
   that once the glibc community trusts someone enough to make their releases,
   this person should obtain upload rights on the GNU ftp server. And then
   it would be logical to call this person a "maintainer", since uploading a new
   release is formally the most powerful act in maintaining a package (while
   practically, of course inspiring the development, organising the community
   and so on are also very important).

Being a GNU maintainer has a very specific meaning, and a very
specific responsibility role.  It means that one needs to follow and
implement GNU policies.  So just because someone can upload a tarball
(or push a commit), doesn't necesserily mean that one wants to take on
that responsibility -- they might disagree with the GNU project but
still be a valuable, appreciated and prolific contributor.

   We should also think about the number of maintainers in a redefined
   governance structure. Is there a need to restrict their number, or
   could each and every developer have the same maintainer
   responsability? If there is a fixed number, how could it be related
   to the size of the project?  It seems natural to me that the GNU
   libc or GNU Guix should have more maintainers than GNU MPC, for
   instance.

This is already decided on a case by case basis by RMS/GAC.  As you
say, some project have different needs than others.