Noah I had already withdrawn auto-assignment in the same thread [1] with
following comment
[Animesh>] +1, that is the reason Apache projects do not use @author
tag. I take back my original argument of auto-assigning based on maintainers
list. I did a search but did not find any community using auto-assignment. The
community argument wins.
Regarding removing the primary maintainers I agree that it can be dropped and
just call it maintainers or other inviting name.
[1]
http://markmail.org/message/udidz5fsgolng2xs?q=list:org%2Eapache%2Eincubator%2Ecloudstack-dev+auto+assignment+from:"Animesh+Chaturvedi"&page=1
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Noah Slater [mailto:nsla...@apache.org]
> Sent: Friday, May 03, 2013 6:04 AM
> To: dev@cloudstack.apache.org
> Subject: [DISCUSS] Primary maintainers?
>
> Hi folks,
>
> While reading the meeting minutes, I found a link to:
>
> https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/Current+Maintai
> ners+Per+Component
>
> I feel concerned about the distinction between "primary maintainer" and
> "secondary maintainer". I believe this could discourage contribution. So I
> thought I'd bring this up here so we can have a chat about it.
>
> If you had a group of maintainers, and it was obvious that this lis could be
> one
> person, or several, then you would feel like you could join it if you wanted
> to.
> It would feel like a team effort. A loose organisation of interested parties.
>
> If there is a primary maintainer, then there is a feeling that this piece of
> code
> is owned by somebody, and all you can do is perhaps assist that person. Or
> perhaps you need to clear everything with that person first? How does it
> work?
>
> (This is the reason Apache projects do not have "lead developers" or BFDLs.
> It discourages participation, and fosters a subservient permission culture
> where we want a do-ocracy. It's also the reason we don't put author names
> in source code file. We never want someone to look at something, with an
> idea to fix or improve it and think, "oh, I better not, this isn't mine.")
>
> I took a peek through my email for additional context, and I found:
>
> On 2 April 2013 23:45, Animesh Chaturvedi <animesh.chaturv...@citrix.com>
> wrote:
>
> >
> > Can I propose that whoever wants to contribute in fixing defects for a
> > specific module add their name as maintainer of that module in
> > component maintainer list [1]? And we update how to contribute wiki on
> this process .
> >
> > During 4.1 there are a large number of major issues that as community
> > we ended up not addressing and given that number of unassigned issues
> > is high % should we consider auto-assign based on the maintainers
> > list? This is still not optimal since auto-assign will go to primary
> > maintainer and secondary maintainers still need to pull in defects
> > but is better than one person triaging defects.
> >
>
> I understand the motivation behind this, but I believe the outcome of that
> thread was a consensus that auto-assignment does not happen in any other
> Apache projects, and should not happen here either. (So no need for this
> "primary maintainer" column.)
>
> --
> NS
