[OpenAFS-devel] Moving Forwards

[Simon Wilkinson]

Hi all,

Following on from last weeks plethora of resignations and negativity, I =
want to propose some ways that we can move forwards, and hopefully =
reduce the inertia that has built up in our development process. One of =
my key aims here is to reduce the workload on the remaining Gatekeepers, =
and to remove any potential for them becoming road blocks in the =
process. I should add that I'm proposing all of this in an individual =
capacity - my employer has had no input into what follows!

We should dramatically increase the number of people who can provide +2 =
reviews in gerrit. My proposal here is that this would be open to anyone =
who has demonstrated an interest in OpenAFS and an understanding of some =
of the code. Say anyone who has contributed more than 2 patches. The =
understanding would be that people only provide +2 reviews for code that =
they are confident is correct, in a section of the codebase that they =
have a reasonable knowledge of.

We should increase the number of people who can submit code. I'd propose =
granting submit access to anyone who has a deep understanding of a =
particular area of the code, with the understanding being that they only =
submit changes to areas that they understand, and are as "responsible" =
for any breakage caused by that change as the original author. For =
example, Andrew for the fileserver, Marc for the Linux cache manager and =
so on. Whilst this hugely opens up the flow of changes into the tree, I =
don't think it will be particularly destabilising - I'd expect folk to =
use their submit powers responsibly, and we can always revert changes =
that shouldn't have made it through.

We should appoint release managers (other than the gatekeepers) for the =
1.4 and 1.6 stable branches. 1.4 has stagnated for years, and there are =
a lot of changes backed up that some people will probably be interested =
in. I think there's a danger of 1.6 stagnating in the same way, =
especially if we're all off writing new code. Having one, or more, =
people take on a release manager role should hopefully help unblock the =
flow of releases.

We should open up RT to all comers. For most projects, commenting on =
issues in the bug tracking system is the first way that newcomers get =
started. But in OpenAFS, commenting on bugs is restricted to a select =
few. I believe that we should turn this on its head, and give access to =
everything (bar delete) to anyone who wants to be able to comment. We're =
an open source project, not a commercial endeavour, and people who are =
reporting bugs should understand that some of the responses may be more =
useful than others. Again, I would expect this to be self policing.

Thoughts, comments?

Cheers,

Simon.