On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 9:59 AM, Mike Kienenberger <mkien...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 12:39 PM, Rich Bowen <rbo...@rcbowen.com> wrote: > > > The board, and comdev, will say "here's how we think things should go", > > but there's a lot of room between a mature project like httpd, where > > someone has 20 years worth of information to read about how to get > started, > > and a newer project like, say, Open Climate Workbench, which requires a > > deep understanding of climate science to contribute meaningfully**, which > > completely justifies different levels of "barrier to entry" when it comes > > to inviting committers. > > > > ** Note: This is a hypothetical example. I don't actually know anything > > about OCW. Please don't get bogged down in the example if I'm mistaken. > > > Here's a better not-quite-so-hypothetical example. A project like MyFaces > has to pass the TCK testing suite provided by Oracle. We would not want > to allow unrestricted commit access by someone who did not > understand profoundly and intuitively that the JSF API portion of the > project has a predefined public API which cannot be changed. Some projects feel this way. Others have found that review is just as effective as restricting commit bits tightly. The classic case is Subversion which has a very high profile (and thus is obliged to have stable API's). That PMC offers a commit bit to anyone who asks. People seem to forget that erroneous commits that pass review can simply be reverted. That is one of the points of using version control.
