Governance revisited (Wineconf report)

[n0dalus]

On 9/23/06, Robert Lunnon <bobl at optushome.com.au> wrote:
>
> 1. Publish the patch acceptance policy - Make sure this is the acceptance
> policy and not the patch acceptance process. The Patch acceptance policy
> should be developed by community process and be subject to change (and change
> control). Perhaps a standing wineconf agenda item here.
>
> 2. Adapt the patch acceptance process to create a right of appeal where a
> patch can be proven to be within the Patch Acceptance policy. Appeal should
> be independent of and binding on Alexandre - this eliminates one-to-one
> arguments about patch acceptability while still providing good excellent
> control.  It will also have the effect of reducing Alexandres workload.
>
> 2. Have a Wine Developers - Bill of rights - particularly preserve the right
> to dissent and disagree. To develop freely, most importantly It must
> recognise, as Dr Gow has so eloquently said,  that most Wine developers don't
> have any interest in WIne and must be treated as valuable volunteers. This
> has to be respected in the Bill of Rights.
>
> 3. Have a community process for properly handling process change.
>
> 4. Have a similar wine users Bill of rights - The users of wine need a say.
>
> 5. Have a community process for handling these requests according to the BOR.
>

Having a bureaucratic process like that would slow down the wine
project more than a handful of rejected patches ever could. There may
be structural problems, but bureaucracy is not the solution.

As others have proposed, I think it would be good to implement a
system so that rejected patches don't just get forgotten. I don't
personally think that bugzilla is a good solution to the problem
though -- it's very difficult to use efficiently and the interface is
terrible.

A good patch handling system might:
- Watch the wine-patches list, automatically adding patches and
comments (replies)
- Provide a way to categorise/tag patches
- Have a way of creating patch sets, which can be downloaded as a
single diff (eg, WoW patch set)
- Show which patches still apply cleanly
- Collect statistics, and be able to show which patches or patch sets
are the most downloaded
- Allow logged-in users with confirmed email addresses to send
comments (replies) and new patches to the wine-patches list through
the website
- Watch wine-cvs for corresponding accepted patches, and mark the
patches that have been accepted

If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to write a little mockup in php
or something.

n0dalus.