[gentoo-dev] A proposal for discussion

[Fred Van Andel <fred@vanandel.net>]

Gentoo is a rapidly growing distribution, with that growth comes
a number of problems. The workload on the core development team 
is increasing all the time and if something is not done to address
it the development of Gentoo will suffer.

It is clear that there are many dedicated individuals involved in
Gentoo who are not involved as part of the development team. Its
only necessary to monitor one of the mailing lists or browse 
through the support forums to realize that. A lot of these people
may not be qualified to be a full-fledged member of the core
development team but they still have skills/time to offer back to
the community.

Therefore I propose that a public ToDo list be created along with
a list coordinator so that the talents of these people can be used.
Tasks would be posted on the public list and assigned to specific
individuals who volunteer. Tasks should be kept specific rather
than open-ended and have a scheduled completion date, if necessary
tasks can be broken up into smaller independent tasks to achieve
these goals.

By the creation of such a list we could help free up the core
developers to do other things, and at the same time speed up the
completion of many of the necessary but routine tasks that seem to
take up so much time.  By taking some of the workload off of the
developers we can allow them to do what they do best, and that is
to develop and refine the features that have attracted us to Gentoo
in the first place.

Some tasks that might be suitable for inclusion on the list:
   - Creation and proofreading of new translations of the 
     documentation.
   - Monitoring of the package list for version changes.
   - Creation of a troubleshooting guide based on the Q & A from
     the mailing lists and forums.
   - Testing of the ebuild scripts/compilation on less common
     platforms.
   - Creation of new ebuild scripts base on user requests.    
   - Updating/testing of ebuild scripts when new versions of 
     packages are developed.
  - The role of ToDo list coordinator(s)

The core developers should be in control of the contents of the 
list to prevent a loss of focus and would have veto powers over the
tasks to be assigned and the results of the completed tasks.

I now having said my piece I open it up for public discussion.

Fred Van Andel