On 26 Oct 2015, at 22:23, Nick Kew <n...@webthing.com> wrote: > On Mon, 26 Oct 2015 09:51:43 -0700 > Jacob Champion <champio...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> I'd rather not feel like I'm just annoying dev@ until you submit my >> stuff -- I want to *talk* about it, and improve the server. > > That may not be easy. You need to find someone who'll be interested in an > idea or patch, and has the time to review it. > Plus, the community as a whole to agree it's a good idea, or at least not > actively oppose it. > > I wonder if workflow would be improved if we had named maintainers for > particular parts of the codebase - for example individual modules? Not > necessarily to do all the work, but to take primary responsibility to see > that your ideas don't just fall through the gaps and get ignored?
How does the word “sponsor” sound? Someone who encourages and champions the development activity around a particular feature (and is also very welcome to contribute). The existing and more formal mechanisms for approving commits seem to work fine as a way of controlling the quality of code. Improving the workflow means, to me, coaching and leadership, and different kinds of code review. Someone who isn't very good at C (like me) might well want to make a code contribution but not be sure how. I saw recently how much perseverance Yingqi Lu put in towards getting SO_REUSEPORT support into trunk and then into 2.4.17 – and that's great. It's unfortunate that the same perseverance also offers a lesson about the kind of barriers that a would-be contributor might encounter. So, sponsorship can be about encouraging participation and progress. I'm imagining someone who rarely has to settle a decision – those should stay consensual and democratic - but often leads discussions and moves things on. Comments very welcome. -- Tim Bannister – is...@c8h10n4o2.org.uk
