Reviewing the process for giving people commit rights

[Nicolas Fella]

On 4/1/22 17:28, Nate Graham wrote:
> Hello folks,
>
> When someone is proposed to get commit access, currently a sponsor
> proposes it, the intended recipient contacts sysadmin, sysadmin
> reviews, and then asks the sponsor if it's okay. This process
> essentially only allows for sysadmin review, since the sponsor has
> already implicitly approved by virtue of being the sponsor.
>
> This caused a problem recently in KWin. A new contributor was given
> commit rights very soon after he appeared, and then immediately after
> that, he inappropriately merged a not-fully-reviewed an un-accepted
> merge request
> (https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/1980). It seems
> that he did not have a sense of the cultural norms around committing
> to KDE repos, and giving him commit access was probably premature.
>
> I'd like to propose that we need to make the commit access review
> process open to review by more people so that we can flag issues like
> this sooner. Maybe kde-core-devel?
>
> Nate

I think this case shows more a lack of communication towards the person
in question what rights and responsibilities come with commit access
rather than a problem with the current review process. In other words,
other reviewers would likely not have prevented what has happened. It's
hard for any kind of reviewer to know whether the person to be reviewed
knows the social etiquette that comes with commit access.

To summarize: I don't see a need to change how applications are
reviewed, but perhaps there are steps we can integrate into the
application process to communicate better the social etiquette that
comes with commit access.

Cheers

Nico