[ruby-core:26147] Maintainer Election Process; Was: Re: [ANN] Ruby Developer's Meeting 20091013

2009/10/13 Marc-Andre Lafortune <[e-mail]>:
> Other volunteers on ruby-core mailing list:
> Yehuda Katz for delegate.rb
> Ujihisa for English.rb and tempfile.rb
> Kornelius Kalnbach for ostruct.rb
> Roger Pack for tempfile.rb

I send mails to maintainers in order to complete the maintainer
confirmation proccess [ruby-core:25764].
As a result, Michael Neumann resigned from the maintainer of XMLRPC,
GOTO Yuzo resigned from the maintainer of webrick and openssl.
Now I'm waiting for some replies.

As Leonard translated the log of meeting into English, we talked about
what maintainer is and how we should elect a maintainer.
[ruby-core:26102].


== What is a maintainer?
A maintainer of a bundled library, called "library maintainer",
maintains the library.
* The maintainer fixes bugs of the library. Particularly, (s)he should
  fix security vulnerabilities as soon as possible.
* (S)he closes reported issues on the Redmine.
  * Or (s)he will be discharged by the 3 months rule  [ruby-core:25764].
  * (S)he can close it by fixing or rejecting.  Corresponding statues
    on the Redmine are "Closed", "Rejected", "Feedback" and
    "Third Party's Issue".
* (S)he has commit right to Ruby's repository so that s(he) can modify
  his(her) library in the repository.
* (S)he has "developer" role on the Redmine so that s(he) can modify
  issues.
* Tranditionally, maintainers have had authority to define specs of
  their library. This is because most of the maintainers were the
  original author of the library and they have enough understood Ruby's
  policy and the library's policy.
  They have respected discussions on our community. New maintainers also
  should act as they have done.


== Submaintainer
Matz is worried about "new committers ... adding strange, unveiled new
features"  [ruby-core:26102].
So I proposed "sub-maintainer"

Anyway,
* The sub-maintainer writes a patch to fix a bug of the library.
  Particularly, (s)he should fixes security vulnerabilities as soon as
  possible.
* (S)he closes reported issues on the Redmine.
  * Or (s)he will be discharged by the 3 months rule  [ruby-core:25764].
  * (S)he can close it by fixing or rejecting.  Corresponding statues
    on the Redmine are "Closed", "Rejected", "Feedback" and
    "Third Party's Issue".
* Some of sub-maintainers are committers. But others are not committers.
* (S)he has "contributor" role on the Redmine so that s(he) can modify
  issues.


== Maintainer election process
A person who want to maintain an unmaintained library should explain
what (s)he want to do. [ruby-core:26130] is a good example.
If (s)he hopes to add a new feature or reimplement the library, (s)he
should show the plan.

The plan will be discussed on ruby-core or ruby-dev. Finally Matz
will decide whether (s)he is accepted as a sub-maintainer or not.
After it passed enough time, Matz will appoint the sub-maintainer as a
maintainer - if (s)he will have done well.


== Necessity of maintainers
Some of the bundled libraries are already stable enough. The libraries
do not have to be actively maintained.
But even the libraries need those who reject a request of strange
feature. And, anyway, someone must write a patch when a bug of the
libraries appears.

So stable libraries need only sub-maintainers but not maintainers with
unlimited rights.


== Recruitment of Maintainers
Bundled library should have a, at least, sub-maintainer. So recruitment
is necessary.
But I want to wait a week to complete the confirmation. After that, I'll
update the list of maintainers.
http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/wiki/ruby/Maintainers
Then, accepting candidature will start.


Thanks,
-- Yuki Sonoda (Yugui)