Re: [boost] XXX owner unresponsive to persistent problems for multiple years (was: [test] boost.test owner ...)

Subject: Re: [boost] XXX owner unresponsive to persistent problems for multiple years (was: [test] boost.test owner ...)
From: Adam Wulkiewicz (adam.wulkiewicz_at_[hidden])
Date: 2015-01-09 14:57:54

Olaf Van Der Spek wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 8, 2015 at 9:50 PM, Robert Ramey <ramey_at_[hidden]> wrote:
>>>   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/256063
>>>   http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lib.boost.devel/256571
>> I'm disputing there is a problem with orphaned libraries.  But just
> Are you or are you not? ;)
>
>> letting anyone check in changes is not the solution.  Transfering
>> maintenance responsibility to another person is the only real
>> solution
> I think having multiple maintainers is an even better solution.

Furthermore it wouldn't be a problem for the "community" to review pull 
requests if such additional maintainer needed some help. AFAIU the 
difference between Boost and many of the other open-source projects is 
that Boost is not one monolithic library/project but a group or 
container of libraries. Specific libraries has always been bound tightly 
with their authors. And with per-submodule access rights on GitHub this 
is even more noticeable. We could think about relaxing this bound and go 
towards slightly more distributed model.

For instance, CMT could have access rights for all (or much more) 
libraries and when they wasn't sure if a pull request should be merged 
they could ask the community for a small review, which could be done 
directly on GitHub. A few months is more than enough for "the community" 
to find some time to review a pull request. Especially when probably 
most of the pull requests contain simple fixes.

Not to mention that CMT could have more members, or maybe better all 
"active" authors/maintainers could have the modification rights for 
"orphaned" libraries since it's very common that a bug in some library 
affects some other library, there is a fix ready but noone is willing to 
apply it.

I'm guessing that those hanging pull requests and patches on trac 
discourages people from the "outside" to get involved in the evelution 
of a library, find and fix bugs, etc.

Regards,
Adam