Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:15:32 -0700
From: Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>
Subject: Re: Contributor listing policy
In-reply-to: <20080310093353.GG30980@svr2.hagander.net>
To: Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>
Cc: "Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com>, pgsql-www@postgresql.org
Message-id: <47D56CB4.9090208@agliodbs.com>
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Magnus,

> It was also presented as the solution that -core agreed on. I'm sure that
> if Josh actually lied about that, someone would've spoken up quite fast.
> But I strongly doubt that Josh would claim to present the "view of the core
> team" if the discussion hadn't taken place.

Heh.  As if I could get away with that -- I'd have until list lag caught 
up to get blasted.

I guess one of the questions here is "who owns the contributor 
listings?".  It's not a question we've ever dealt with specifically 
before, and it's unclear on even what *mailing list* would be involved 
in discussing them.  It seems like we'd need to involve half or more of 
the lists.

For the last 3 years, nobody has discussed this because Robert just did 
it and submitted the list to Core, which approved it.  Now Robert is 
tired of the work, and what was implicit needs to become explicit.

The reason I'm putting forward that Core ought to be ultimately 
responsible is threefold:

1) Core is a central point of contact which is supposed to know what's 
going on in the various disconnected mailing lists, and as such is our 
only existing "central" coordinating group;

2) The seven Core team members place in the listings isn't going to 
change, and thus we can argue about who should be where without 
statutory personal bias;

3) Core does conventionally deal with other issues around contributor 
status, such as CVS access, release notes, and (in extreme cases) banning.

Barring Core handling it, we'd have to form a separate committee, and 
somehow pick people who would be both representative and relatively 
impartial.  That seems like it would increase the amount of work 
involved in getting the listings updated siginificantly, to the point 
where they might not get updated at all.

Given that the only identified real problem (listings not being updated 
frequently enough) is not solved by forming a separate committee, why 
not take the easiest path, at least until another concrete problem is 
identified?

--Josh Berkus