[forum] XFree86's Future and thoughts and suggestions

[James Boyden]

On Tuesday, 01 Apr 2003, Mark Vojkovich wrote:

> On Tue, 1 Apr 2003, David Dawes wrote:
> 
> > On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 12:56:40PM -0500, Shawn Starr wrote:
> > >
> > >I feel the whole core membership idea is a blockage to XFree86 development.
> 
>   I did my most significant work on XFree86 before becoming a core
> member.  I was "promoted" to core *because* of my work.  I did not
> have CVS access before that.  I once maintained the XF86_S3 server,
> wrote the S3 driver in the XF86_SVGA server, maintained the mga
> driver in the XF86_SVGA server, was principle author and maintainer
> of the mga driver in XFree86 4, principle author and maintainer
> of XAA and principle implementor and maintainer of Xv,
<snip>
> > 
> > Core != commit access.  I'm not sure where that myth came from,
> > but it has never been true.  There are 14 people with commit access,
> > not all of them are core members, and not all core members have
> > commit access.  I don't have an answer as to why only 2 committers
> > regularly deal with general submissions, with a few others dealing
> > with specific submissions.  Maybe we don't have the right 14.
> 
>    We don't have the right 14.  We have alot of holes in our coverage.
> The thing is that people have certain areas of expertise.  If you
> have a patch for XAA or the nv driver or Xinerama, I'm your man.
> If it's something about input drivers, for instance, I wouldn't
> dare commit it because I don't know enough about it or how it fits
> into the big picture.  You need to have points of contact for
> various parts of the tree.  This is roughly the Linux kernel's
> model at least as far as knowing who to send patches to and who
> reviews them.
> 
>    So a point I'm trying to make is that you can have 100 people
> with commit access and if nobody there knows anything about
> input drivers, an input patch may still sit in the patch queue without
> getting committed.  That's why I think the maintainer model is a
> good one.

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

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.