[Gdal-dev] RFC 9: Paid Maintainer Guidelines

[Mateusz Loskot]

Frank Warmerdam wrote:
> Mateusz Loskot wrote:
>> One note to the following statement:
>>
>> "Substantial new development projects will only be taken on by the
>> maintainer with the direction of a PSC motion (or possibly an RFC
>> designating the maintainer to work on a change)."
>>
>> I understand, it regulates potential tasks the maintainer
>> can take from external entities. Is my understanding correct?
> 
> Mateusz,
> 
> Sorry, it was not my intention that this have anything to do with
> work the maintainer would do outside the maintenance contract.

Frank,

Apparently, I misunderstood the "new development projects" statement.

> Instead it is an effort to avoid having the maintainer end up
> spending most of their time on new development without the
> agreement of the PSC.  That is, I hope the "maintainer" role to be
> primarily focused on stuff that isn't brand new development, and
> this clause is in support of that notion.

Yes, this is clear now.

> I don't wish to interfere in any way with what the maintainer does
> "on their own time".  That is, outside the bounds of the contracted
> maintainer time.

Understood.

>> A question about reporting, I'd suggest to include a note to the
>> guidelines that the maintainer is obliged to spend substantial amount of
>> hours on tasks weekly, to avoid empty reports :-)
>>
>> I mean, if the maintainer is contracted to spend 100 hours/month,
>> then, technically, it's possible to work out this amount of hours
>> in 2 weeks, so next 2 weeks will bring empty reports.
>> If such situations should be avoided, then the guidelines
>> should include a note about that to give general regulations of monthly
>> timetable.
> 
> Good point.  Well, in particular i'd like to see the maintainer being
> the first level of review for new bug reports so they are being treated
> more quickly and consistently than is now the case.  And for this (and
> mailing list support) to work well it implies the maintainer is at least
> monitoring and responding to new items on an ongoing basis.

Right, for every projects it's better to maintain continuously,
ie. 3 hours for 30 days, than ad-hoc like 9 hours for 10 days and
leave the remaining 20 days not covered.

> I'll try to write in something to cover the above without being draconian.

:-)

Cheers
-- 
Mateusz Loskot
http://mateusz.loskot.net