[Development] Maintainership of QtNetwork

[Alan Alpert]

On Mon, Nov 4, 2013 at 11:58 AM, André Pönitz
<andre.poenitz at mathematik.tu-chemnitz.de> wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 04, 2013 at 04:25:26PM +0000, Koehne Kai wrote:
>>
>> > -----Original Message----- From:
>> > development-bounces+kai.koehne=digia.com at qt-project.org
>> > [mailto:development-bounces+kai.koehne=digia.com at qt-project.org] On
>> > Behalf Of Richard Moore Sent: Monday, November 04, 2013 1:32 PM To:
>> > development at qt-project.org Subject: [Development] Maintainership of
>> > QtNetwork
>> >
>> > Hi All,
>> >
>> > As some of you may know, Shane has a new job and therefore has a lot
>> > less time to spend on QtNetwork. He, Peter and I have discussed how we
>> > should maintain the module in the future. What we're proposing is that
>> > Peter and I take over as joint maintainers since neither of us has the
>> > time to keep on top of things alone. Anyone looking to help out in this
>> > area should feel free to drop us a mail.
>>
>> This isn't a veto or anything, but having two 'equal' maintainers for the
>> same area sounds odd to me. I mean, it's perfectly fine that you split up
>> the workload, but the point of having a nominal maintainer is to have
>> _one_ person to go to, and _one_ person who can decide if there's need
>> ... It doesn't mean that the maintainer can't delegate his work though,
>> up to the point that whomever he trusts can act as a de-facto decision
>> maker, too.
>
> Well, I am pretty much in the other camp. I see no problem here, neither of
> the setup in general (better bus factor, less chance of overload, something
> that rather should be encouraged...) nor with Rich and Peter in particular.

You're missing the point of having a hierarchy, which is to
deliberately assign clear bottlenecks for responsibility (and they
shouldn't be used that often).  Maintainer isn't that different from
approver, there shouldn't be any more bus factor or overload because
the real work is split between the approvers/contributors in that area
already (PS: Everyone is welcome to fix QtQuick bugs for 5.2 :D ).

> If a contributor want a "definite maintainer answer" he puts both
> co-maintainers on the reviewer list. Something will happen.

I'd like to limit the set of possible somethings, for a theoretically
simpler structure.

Back from the general to the specific, I'm definitely happy with
Richard and Peter stepping up if Shane no longer has time. It's better
to have too many good maintainers for a module than too few.

Since I think it'll be a long time until we hit a situation where the
designated tie breaker rule will be needed, I'd suggest we vote them
both in first and then tackle the general question of "shared
maintainerships" separately.

--
Alan Alpert