CVS policy

[mjs eazel com]

Hey guys,

Recently, Marco from the Galeon project asked to have Galeon imported
into gnome-cvs, and for accounts to be created for the active Galeon
developers. This sparked a discussion of what kind of policy we want
for importing new projects into gnome cvs, and for creating gnome cvs
accounts.

The policy we have now is pretty ad-hoc - everyone with the
permissions to create cvs accounts or import projects uses their own
judgement, and this means the answer people get depends on who they
ask. On the other hand, people who have gnome cvs accounts already
often create new modules and these are generally not removed except in
extreme cases of unrelatedness to gnome.

I think ultimately this is an issue for the board to decide (or
delegate to a CVS policy/administration group), but we'd like to gague
developer opinion here first.

There's two major schools of thought on this.

One is best represented by Elliot. He thinks we should keep tight
reins over adding new projects and new people, because if we draw the
line wider than the core components of Gnome, we may end up not being
able to say no to anyone. And endless growth is not a good option,
because we don't have per-module ACLs or any of the other things
needed to provide a good, complete hosting service.

I have a different point of view (which I think is one that Havoc and
Owen mostly agree with, but they can speak for themselves) which is
that we should be permissive and generally accept gnome-affiliated
projects that want to be included, especially if they are popular and
actively maintained, and the sort of thing that might be put in a
Gnome release or a Gnome extra apps release at some point. If ACLs are
a serious concern, that is something we should come up with a solution
for. But the benefits of having major gnome projects all on one cvs
server are fairly significant; it makes things a lot easier for people
like me who build stuff from source all the time.

Anyway, I've given you a topic, please discuss. :-)

 - Maciej