Re: XFree86's Future and thoughts and suggestions

On Wed, 2 Apr 2003, James Boyden wrote:

> Idea:
>  What if this unofficial list of maintainers and experts were made public?

   I think the idea is that they become official maintainers and it
will be public.

   I agree with your assement of the benefits.


			Mark.

> 
> This way, there would be a reasonably clear mapping from a particular area
> of XFree86 to the people who know about it and maintain it.  If a particular
> developer (or developers) are only "experts" or maintainers in a particular
> area because there is no-one else (the sort of "nomination by default" which
> seems to be fairly common in XFree86 development), this can be noted as
> well.
> 
> The possible benefits of this idea include:
> 
> * new developers have a clear point-of-contact for questions and informal
>    code reviews
> 
> * if a new developer is interested in a particular area of XFree86, they
>    can become an "apprentice" in that area to the current expert(s)
> 
> * you know who to bug if your patch isn't getting reviewed fast enough  ;)
> 
> and especially,
> * if coverage of a particular area is thin, or if the maintainers/experts
>    for that area are the maintainers/experts "by default", this is a clear
>    place where a new developer can feel they can make a difference.
> 
> This last point is possibly the most important in attracting new developers,
> because it seems that new developers are often discouraged from contributing
> to the project because the project is so massive, and there doesn't seem to
> be anywhere the new developer can contribute and "make a difference".
> 
> Of course, the additional benefit of the last point is that you get new
> developers where you really need them (which lightens the burden on the
> current developers) and you get new experts in areas where expertise was
> lacking.
> 
> I don't know the XFree86 website back-to-front, so if this information is
> already present, I apologise.  If the information *is* already present,
> then there's at least one person who couldn't find it, so perhaps it could
> be made to "stand out" a little more.
> 
> 
>                                                   Jimmy.
> 
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