Hi,
On bigger or older projects, I see a recurring anti-pattern
that some committers are still listed although they have not
contributed anything for several years.
I'm aware project teams have the capability to remove
committers, but I find that this is not very usual although
it's a valid cleanup that is beneficial for the project
(inactive committers may forgot to vote for other committers
or important decisions, so they basically slow down decision
making without providing value for the project). One reason
why this may be unusual is that some more active but newer
contributors may feel uncomfortable removing commit rights to
their "elders" (which sometimes have even been mentors) and
don't do the cleanup as it could be interpreted as a lack of
respect. At least, that's how I felt several years ago when I
first started about removing some commit rights, it's not an
easy thing to do morally, although it clearly appeared as
what's best for the project.
So I think the EDP and related tools could maybe make this
task simpler to project teams.
EDP currently says:
"""
The Project Leads are responsible for ensuring the smooth
operation of the Project. A Committer who is disruptive, does
not participate actively, or has been inactive for an extended
period may have his or her commit status revoked by the
Project Leads. Unless otherwise specified, "an extended
period" is defined as "no activity for more than six months".
"""
which is good, however, I suggest we extend this power to
PMC and even EMO, by appending something like:
"The project lead, PMC or EMO are in charge of maintaining
the list of active committers and are all allowed to revoke
committers status if activity criteria defined earlier are not
met."
From here, it would be nice to have tools to encourage
projects in doing the cleanup; some possible ways to do that:
* Have some bi-yearly message sent automatically from the
PMI to the project mailing-lists to remind which committers
are inactive in practice and remind them about the EDP part
about activity being required for keep commit rights
* If some committers have not been active for multiple
"extended periods" and were already notified several times
about it, EMO would automatically remove them as committers.
What do you think?
