[Incubator] GRASS (and) PSC

[Daniel Brookshier]

Hi Markus,

Allow me to spit out some mentoring.

The PSC as an entity should make bigger decisions than managing the  
day to day code changes. Think of it more as a steering committee. It  
can be used to prioritize issues or plan major enhancements. Of  
course the PSC should create the rules for the daily changes, so  
let's talk about that as a reason for the PSC to come together.

Sounds like you have a problem now for sure in regards to managing  
code change. I think the bigger problem is that there are no checks  
an balance. PSC voting on a change or assigning maintainers can work,  
but it is hard to maintain over time.

The key in any project is to ensure that change is both necessary and  
correct.  Not rocket science for sure. The problem in open source is  
that people are volunteers and we need to ensure that we don't drive  
away volunteers because of the governance that slows people down.

The easiest and proven method for change over time done by using  
issues, patches, and +1 voting. Simply, all changes must be written  
up as an issue first and a patch submitted which is voted on by at  
least one other commiter. As long as at least one developer votes +1  
and no other reviewer votes -1, the patch is committed. It has a  
couple of steps, but it ensures that code is looked at and possibly  
tested before it is applied to the main branch.

Here is a recommended way of running the process that is patterned  
after several successful projects: http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/ 
Managing_Changes_to_Code



Daniel Brookshier | Community Manager | CollabNet, Inc.
8000 Marina Blvd. Suite 600 | Brisbane, CA 94005 | USA
O 972.422.5261 | C 214.207.6614 | dbrookshier at collab.net


On Apr 26, 2006, at 5:32 AM, Markus Neteler wrote:

> http://grass.itc.it/pipermail/grass5/2006-April/022403.html