Re: A "cosmetic changes" commit that removes security fixes

[Pjotr Prins]

On Sat, May 01, 2021 at 12:53:43PM +0530, Arun Isaac wrote:
> We may like to imagine that being a core maintainer is not a badge of
> honor, but in reality, it *is* a badge of honor. A core maintainer is
> not just a regular participant any more than the President is just a
> public servant. If core maintainership is not to be associated with
> power and honor, we should put in place processes to achieve that. 

It is an interesting perspective. One problem I see with assuming a
badge of honor is that it will make it much harder to decide on giving
commit rights because it will have to be based on merit/selection and
make even harder to revoke them. Are you suggesting we elect
committers?

At this point, my personal assumption about the procedure and what I
have seen is that if someone is promising and active they get commit
rights - i.e., to make it easier on everyone who is maintaining Guix.
It is about flow of work and convenience. 

A core committer is arguably not even a core maintainer.

Nothing makes me think a core committer is comparable to an elected
president.

The Debian project is much larger than Guix and has unwieldy selection
criteria for people joining certain levels. Is that what we want? One
of the attractions of Guix to me is that it is a flat project and, as
far as I can tell, we have mostly avoided regular politics distracting
us from real work. We have channels so people can do what they want.
No reason to meddle with the core project if you are not so inclined.

I would vote to keep the Guix project structure as simple and flat as
possible without overheads. Nimble is the word. Want to build your own
cathedral? Start a channel. 

Pj.

PS: I am not a core committer and not a core maintainer. All opinions
are my own.