Re: repo for user contribs? (was: Re: Official policy on LLM-assisted contributions)

[...]
> So what are your thoughts on an extra
> repo where contributions can be shared,
> reviewed, stabilized & forward-ported until
> -- if ever -- they make their way into mainline?
>
> I'm thinking of allowing one or two orders of
> magnitude more committers than in the main
> repo, basically giving access to all serious users.
> Any stable contribs ready for merge could be
> automatically found at any point in time, simply
> via branch & tag naming conventions.

That tends to work well only in codebases that are very modular (like an app framework with a clear delineation between core and plugins), otherwise you end up with something like the Linux kernel, where the maintainers have to deal with massive amounts of merge conflicts all the time.

And that only works well because the authors of controversial features have strong incentives to put up with those frequent conflicts (often because it's a well paid job) and working with the core developers to get the feature in working shape, which includes frequent complete rewrites.

-- 
Stelian Ionescu