[Python-Dev] [rasmus@apache.org: Re: PMCs and Apache]

[Greg Stein]

Woah... this is an interesting factoid about the number of committers for a
project. I had no idea PHP had this many...

Can this work with Python? Dunno. I think if a "true core" group pays
attention to the -checkins alias, then yah. If that review is ever lost,
then those "edge" committers could introduce crap.

I'm not asking for more committers to Python. But if some people were
worried about the "explosion" of committers from about six a couple months
ago to the current 13, then just look to PHP and count your thanks :-)
Mostly, this email is for pondering...

Cheers,
-g

----- Forwarded message from Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@apache.org> -----

Reply-To: members@apache.org
Date: Sat, 24 Jun 2000 20:52:01 -0700 (PDT)
From: Rasmus Lerdorf <rasmus@apache.org>
To: members@apache.org
Subject: Re: PMCs and Apache

> More relevant is the process by which I became a contributor.  For PHP, I
> sent a note describing what I was exploring, and I was sent a note with a
> password.  I didn't know CVS.  I didn't know PHP.  I didn't know open
> source.  But like a stranger offering to help at a barn raising, I was
> simply handed a hammer and expected to get busy.

That has always been the atmosphere.  It isn't quite as free as that.  We
get 10-20 cvs write account requests every week and tend to only hand out
1 or 2 actual accounts.  There are a lot of clueless people out there.  
However, if the person has shown any sign of being competent by explaining
in a rational manner what they plan on working on, I see no reason not to
let them bash away.  Reversing somebodys' changes and removing a cvs
account is trivial, and in the past 5 years we have yet to revoke an
account.  We have reversed changes of course, but even that doesn't happen
too often.

There are currently 165 people with write access to the PHP source tree.

This does also relate to the fact that the PHP project is a very broad
project.  No single person could possibly know all 16 supported low-level
database apis, for example.  

For other projects with a much more limited scope, this approach is
probably not optimal, but for PHP it works nicely.  Someone will write a
bit of broken code that shows some good ideas, and others will pounce on
it and fix it.  Often the people who fix it are poor sods who tried to use
the broken feature and had to dive in and fix it themselves.  They request
a cvs account to do this, and they are hooked.  They tend to never stop at
fixing just one thing once they have been given the golden keys.

This approach has also done wonders for the PHP documentation.  The
current manual is around 1100 pages long and has been fully translated to
German, Italian and Japanese with more languages on the way.  (check out
http://snaps.php.net/manual/)

-Rasmus

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/