On Thu, Jan 22, 2015 at 04:37:22PM +0100, Nikos Mavrogiannopoulos wrote:
> > > And there is nothing wrong with review swaps. You help
others,
> > > they help you.
> > That's good for you, but unacceptable to me. That way we penalize people
> > who add packages.
> Penalize in what sense?
In the sense, that in addition to packaging something new you have to
review something else in order to get your new package in. If reviewing
is voluntary it should affect every packager the same, not just the ones
who bring new packages.
I think there's another aspect here which hasn't been mentioned.
Generally, Fedora's policy compliance mechanisms are based on _initial
gating_. That is, we have a really strict package review, but once a
package is in, you can deviate from the guidelines like crazy and we
have no ongoing process to catch that, and only ad-hoc approaches for
correcting something gone really wrong.
Basically, once a package is in, we rely on trust in its maintainer.
And, this extends a step out to package maintainers themselves — we
have a high initial bar to getting a package in, but once you're
sponsored, we assign a great deal of trust.
So, in some respects, the incredibly painful process works
_intentionally_ to weed out contributors who aren't serious enough to
get over that hurdle, on the theory that those who do stay and surmount
it have earned a certain level of project merit and trust.
Now, I'm not saying that this is the best possible approach — or even
that it really works. But I think it _is_ an important angle.
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader