So early on we took the stance that different committers owned different realms of the project. This makes sense, because we want to make sure that outside contributors don't have their patches ignored. However, this also means that all tickets under realm X will be assigned to that person.
I am not a fan of this approach, for a few different reasons- 1. Committers get pidgeon-holed into very specific realms of the project 2. Committers can find themselves stuck with tickets that they are not that aware of and/or don't understand 3. Outsiders can be hesitant to begin contribution because with a ticket assigned they could think that they are working on it 4. At least for me, I would like to use assigned tickets to keep track of what I have on *MY* plate. That is, the things that I am working on and/or want and plan to work on next. I'm wondering what everyone's thoughts would be on making the default behavior for new tickets be unassigned (I imagine this is possible in JIRA) and the method for ticket assignment. We can still divide up the realms for the committers for ensuring validity of the tickets and for handling patches though. This would also mean purging all current ticket assignments, except those which should be legitimately assigned under the new methods. John
