Re: [gentoo-dev] Proxy-maint PR queue resolution speed (Was: Imminent Python 3.12 switch reminder)

[Eli Schwartz <eschwartz93@gmail.com>]

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On 5/30/24 11:09 AM, orbea wrote:
> This is a reoccurring theme and its driving away contributors. The PR
> queue really should be taken care of.


It is a recurring theme in the volunteer open source community that
people work on stuff as and when they have time to do so, which also
means that contributors sometimes have to wait until people are
available to merge PRs.

There are some things that can help make sure people have more time to
volunteer for free to do OSS things:

- carefully consider before adding new packages. Maybe they belong in
  GURU instead? This is something a lot of people have trouble with, I
  fear.

- review PRs, even if you're not a developer, to help polish things up
  so there is less for developers to have to sort through.

- help out in other areas of Gentoo, such as bug wrangling, release
  engineering, or fixing outstanding bugs in packages maintained by
  developers rather than their own proxy-maint packages

- or even just being a sympathetic and friendly ear when developers are
  feeling down from the stress of doing open source work


There are also some things that I personally do not think are especially
helpful:

- complaining that the community is being driven away

- responding to community members adding a *friendly* and cheerful
  comment by pearl clutching about how the community is being driven
  away

- engaging in a multi-year campaign to pressure open source developers
  into feeling guilty about not spending "enough" time, culminating in
  getting maintainer access to an xkcd 2347 "Nebraska" compliant project
  for purposes of inserting a backdoor

- unwittingly being a member of a grassroots support base for the Jia
  Tans of the world by normalizing the relevant behavior


-- 
Eli Schwartz

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