Re: Notify people about empty herds (Was: Re: [gentoo-dev] FTR: media-optical@g.o has no developers)

[Ben de Groot <yngwin@gentoo.org>]

On 3 June 2010 20:54, Jeroen Roovers <jer@gentoo.org> wrote:
> There is a real problem with herds that have a single or no
> maintainer, the former mainly because that could very well lead to
> another case of the latter, and we should certainly address both
> problems, but we should create as little as possible new problems in
> the process.

Also, there are herds that have several members, but none of them is
really active (games, most of the desktop-* herds, etc.). This also
leads to users being discouraged because the bugs they file are left
ignored.

This needs a structural solution. I think we need a team to
systematically look at open bugs and to notify the community of such
problematic herds. I imagine this would be a QA subproject.

Then we also need some structure to redirect some dev love to these
problematic areas. We need to advertise these needs more, to get
trusted users to proxy-maintain. We need to streamline the recruitment
process to make it easier for people who want to volunteer to become
devs. And I could go on for a while. There are a lot of areas where
Gentoo has a lot of room for improvement, and they all interlock.

I believe we need to formulate a vision of what we want Gentoo to be,
and then develop strategies of how to get there. Having a team that
systematically looks at the state of herds as well as open bugs is
--in my opinion-- a crucial first step to adress some of the
structural problems that have plagued Gentoo for years.


Cheers,
Ben