The problem with that is that we don't get any of the benefits out of simplification of our rulesets: namely more comprehensible behavior out of the server when a commit has been blocked and someone needs help, and it doesn't imply that the org has made any cultural shifts towards a more open infra, which defeats a lot of the point of the exercise from my POV.
Let me be clear tho, I have always argued that projects have the exclusive right to control access to their codebase. However the means by which that control is exercised depends on many factors, and we shouldn't enshrine an unexamined mode of technical operation into perpetuity just because "we've always done it that way". Relaxing ACL's simply represents a more practical, and more modern, way of maximizing the utility you get out of a centralized version control tool like Subversion. Projects shouldn't balk at polite suggestions to modernize, even if we always allow themselves the option of declining to participate. >________________________________ > From: Bertrand Delacretaz <bdelacre...@apache.org> >To: dev@community.apache.org >Sent: Friday, January 11, 2013 3:43 AM >Subject: Re: Project Culture and Commit Rights > >On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 4:35 PM, Benson Margulies <bimargul...@gmail.com> wrote: >> ...There's a weaker form of this idea that looks at two populations of >> potential contributors: the members of the Apache Software Foundation >> (members@) and all of the people who have been granted commit rights on all >> of the projects (committers@). Projects that don't feel prepared to offer >> commit-on-demand to the world at large might feel inclined to do so for >> (one or both of) these groups... > >As the ASF aims to give PMCs as much freedom as possible, I'd favor a >solution where PMCs can decide themselves who they give write >permission to their code repositories. > >Basing this on groups, project A could say that it's friends with >projects B and C, and as such allow all people who can write to B and >C to write to A as well, based on group authorizations. > >We used to do that with Cocoon, where B and C were Lenya and Forrest - >as sibling projects, we felt that those folks should be able to commit >small fixes directly without asking, but they were expected to ask >before making any substantial changes to our code. > >A PMC could then decide to give write access to all ASF members, all >committers, etc. Letting PMCs make this decision avoids requiring the >whole ASF (that's 150 projects today) to agree on this, which is in >line with how we usually handle things - modularization vs. requiring >everybody to agree. > >-Bertrand > > >
