Skip to content

Commit

Permalink
Update maintainers guide
Browse files Browse the repository at this point in the history
This makes some changes to the maintainer's guide and roles within the
project.  It removed the concept of a BDFL and carries over the chief
maintainer role into the project.  BDFL sucks and we can do better and
these changed help to make many more things specific around adding new
maintainers and removing them as well.

Signed-off-by: Michael Crosby <crosbymichael@gmail.com>
  • Loading branch information
crosbymichael committed Jul 21, 2015
1 parent d729676 commit 7769292
Showing 1 changed file with 46 additions and 23 deletions.
69 changes: 46 additions & 23 deletions MAINTAINERS_GUIDE.md
Expand Up @@ -25,8 +25,7 @@ It is every maintainer's responsibility to:
* 1) Expose a clear roadmap for improving their component.
* 2) Deliver prompt feedback and decisions on pull requests.
* 3) Be available to anyone with questions, bug reports, criticism etc.
on their component. This includes IRC, GitHub requests and the mailing
list.
on their component. This includes IRC and GitHub issues and pull requests.
* 4) Make sure their component respects the philosophy, design and
roadmap of the project.

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -54,6 +53,10 @@ All decisions affecting runc, big and small, follow the same 3 steps:
* Step 3: Accept (`LGTM`) or refuse a pull request. The relevant maintainers do
this (see below "Who decides what?")

### I'm a maintainer, should I make pull requests too?

Yes. Nobody should ever push to master directly. All changes should be
made through a pull request.

## Who decides what?

Expand All @@ -63,35 +66,55 @@ by anyone is denoted by adding a comment in the pull request: `LGTM`.
However, only currently listed `MAINTAINERS` are counted towards the required
two LGTMs.

runc follows the timeless, highly efficient and totally unfair system
known as [Benevolent dictator for life](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_Dictator_for_Life), with Michael Crosby in the role of BDFL.
This means that all decisions are made by default by Michael. Since making
every decision himself would be highly un-scalable, in practice decisions
are spread across multiple maintainers.
Overall the maintainer system works because of mutual respect across the
maintainers of the project. The maintainers trust one another to make decisions
in the best interests of the project. Sometimes maintainers can disagree and
this is part of a healthy project to represent the point of views of various people.
In the case where maintainers cannot find agreement on a specific change the
role of a Chief Maintainer comes into play.

The relevant maintainers for a pull request can be worked out in two steps:
The Chief Maintainer for the project is responsible for overall architecture
of the project to maintain conceptual integrity. Large decisions and
architecture changes should be reviewed by the chief maintainer.
The current chief maintainer for the project is Michael Crosby (@crosbymichael).

* Step 1: Determine the subdirectories affected by the pull request. This
might be `netlink/` and `security/`, or any other part of the repo.
Even though the maintainer system is built on trust, if there is a conflict
with the chief maintainer on a decision, their decision can be challenged
and brought to the technical oversight board if two-thirds of the
maintainers vote for an appeal. It is expected that this would be a
very exceptional event.

* Step 2: Find the `MAINTAINERS` file which affects this directory. If the
directory itself does not have a `MAINTAINERS` file, work your way up
the repo hierarchy until you find one.

### I'm a maintainer, and I'm going on holiday
### How are maintainers added?

Please let your co-maintainers and other contributors know by raising a pull
request that comments out your `MAINTAINERS` file entry using a `#`.
The best maintainers have a vested interest in the project. Maintainers
are first and foremost contributors that have shown they are committed to
the long term success of the project. Contributors wanting to become
maintainers are expected to be deeply involved in contributing code,
pull request review, and triage of issues in the project for more than two months.

### I'm a maintainer, should I make pull requests too?
Just contributing does not make you a maintainer, it is about building trust
with the current maintainers of the project and being a person that they can
depend on and trust to make decisions in the best interest of the project. The
final vote to add a new maintainer should be approved by over 66% of the current
maintainers with the chief maintainer having veto power. In case of a veto,
conflict resolution rules expressed above apply. The voting period is
five business days on the Pull Request to add the new maintainer.

Yes. Nobody should ever push to master directly. All changes should be
made through a pull request.

### Who assigns maintainers?
### What is expected of maintainers?

Part of a healthy project is to have active maintainers to support the community
in contributions and perform tasks to keep the project running. Maintainers are
expected to be able to respond in a timely manner if their help is required on specific
issues where they are pinged. Being a maintainer is a time consuming commitment and should
not be taken lightly.

When a maintainer is unable to perform the required duties they can be removed with
a vote by 66% of the current maintainers with the chief maintainer having veto power.
The voting period is ten business days. Issues related to a maintainer's performance should
be discussed with them among the other maintainers so that they are not surprised by
a pull request removing them.

Michael has final `LGTM` approval for all pull requests to `MAINTAINERS` files.

### How is this process changed?

Just like everything else: by making a pull request :)

0 comments on commit 7769292

Please sign in to comment.