Re: [MAINT/RFC] Start devolving maintenance responsibility

[Jim Kingdon <kingdon at redhat dot com>]

> Sorry, devolve, as a word, is probably more meaningful to people from
> Commonwealth countries.

I'm familiar with the word (e.g. Scotland) but at least for me it has
all these connotations of national sovereignty and power and such.
For example, it is a dead end to assume that an OS vendor should
automatically maintain GDB on that OS because they "own" the platform
or something.

> The underlying concern I have isn't with people like you that have been
> hacking on open code for years, its with people familar with GDB but not
> so familar with open source.  For that reason, I think it is useful to
> spell out, in basic terms, how the system should work.

Maybe link to The Cathedral and the Bazaar (which is well known) and
Alan Cox's Town Council paper (which deserves to be better known and
is at http://slashdot.org/features/98/10/13/1423253.shtml )?  I was
just showing the Town Council paper to someone in a GDB context and it
seemed to resonate.

I'm sure the looseness of this approach will make some people nervous.
But you can't build trust through rules and policies either.  What is
going to turn GDB development into the (more) vibrant community we
want it to be is delivering on the promises to add maintainers and
otherwise open up.  We've made great progress in the last month and
let's keep it up.