next FESCo meeting agenda.

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Wed, 2006-07-05 at 11:51 +0200, Michael Schwendt wrote:
> On Wed, 5 Jul 2006 10:32:36 +0200, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Jul 05, 2006 at 07:27:09PM +1200, Michael J. Knox wrote:
> > > Can this proposed policy be discussed in the next FESCo meeting?
> > > 
> > > http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MikeKnox/AWOL_Policy
> > 
> > I think that only existing Fedora Contributors should be able to take over
> > a package. However the sponsors should consider every contribution to 
> > fedora extras, including working on AWOL packages for sponsorship.
> 
> This is contradictory.
> 
> With the current sponsorship process, all that is needed to find a sponsor
> is to show a good understanding of the packaging [guidelines]. Yes, it may
> be too easy for somebody to take an existing src.rpm (CVS checkout), bump
> the version or release, present it as an update package for review and be
> sponsored. But if it were not possible, the same person could request
> review of a trivial new package, find a sponsor that way, and then
> proceed to taking over orphans.
> 
> Conclusively, it's a sponsor's decision whether to accept a new contributor
> and regardless of what he wants to work on.
> 
> It could also be that somebody writes
> 
>     "All the packages I'm interested in are in FE already. But if it is
>      possible that we can work together on foo and bar, I'd like to offer
>      my help."
> 
> and a sponsor and package maintainer accepts this without extra steps
> or special requirements.
> 
> The general procedure for becoming a Fedora Extras Contributor, however,
> is to provide a new package in accordance with the instructions found
> in the Wiki.

I would like to see another level of Fedora Extras Contributor.  Someone
previously unsponsored who wants to work on an orphaned package (or
potentially orphaned due to AWOL maintainer) could be sponsored as a
mentored packager.  The mentor would track their mentoree's actions more
closely than normal.  Watch their cvs commits.  Take a hand in watching
upstream's changes.  Act as co-maintainer for the mentorees packages.

This would require someone willing to help other packagers develop to
take on partial maintenance of another package but it can be helpful in
the long run.  Instead of refusing to sponsor a person because of their
inexperience, we can lead them to be more productive long-term.  In the
end, they will be doing good enough work to submit and take-over
packages without someone overseeing their work and the mentor can move
on to helping someone else.

Some ideas for implementing this:
1) The mentoree would have commit rights only to the package they are
taking over.
2) The mentor and mentoree would be comaintainers with the mentor being
the senior partner (but letting the mentoree make most of the decisions
so they can learn.)
3) Eventual sponsorship of the mentored packager should be done by
someone other than the mentor.
4) We need tools to make it easier to track the changes made by the
mentoree.

The implementation may not be possible yet but if the idea of
mentors/mentorees is sound we should figure out what needs to be done to
create it in a sane manner.  Many of the pieces are being worked on
currently (package db, accounts system, new version control system) so
now is a good time to request features that make this possible.

-Toshio
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