[forum] XFree86's Future and thoughts and suggestions

[Egbert Eich]

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

bugzilla should handle this transparently.
However publishing it would be good.

 > 
 > 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.

Yes. I hope this is what will happen.

 > 
 > 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".
 > 

OK, if this is the case we need to work on it.
What do you think is the problem right now?
The unpersonal way of handling fix submissions?
The long time it takes for a fix to be processed?

Would a named list of maintainers make a difference?
This however is no guarantee for speedy handling
as maintainers may be limited with their time.


 > 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.

This would be great, yes. Hope it will really happen.
I'd suggest to go ahead and do the changes. Then we
can come back here in six month from now and see if 
they really made a difference.

 > 
 > 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.
 > 

A 'developer page' is on my todo.

Egbert.