Should we change how we approve developer account requests?

[Nicolás Alvarez]

El lun, 16 de ago. de 2021 a la(s) 13:50, Nate Graham (nate at kde.org) escribió:
> While writing an email in support of a recent request for developer
> access that I encouraged someone to apply for, it struck me as odd that
> the sponsor can approve. I would expect the sponsor to approve or else
> they would not have sponsored the application in the first place!

It's not that odd :) We as sysadmins don't know if you're actually
sponsoring them until you reply approving the request, since people
can request developer access and enter any name as the sponsor. That's
pretty much what the approval is for, to confirm you did encourage
them to apply.

In fact we have gotten responses like "I actually don't know who this
is" or "I have been working with this person but I think this request
is premature, they should continue working via MRs for now". Or us
sysadmins looking at the contribution history and applying some extra
judgement ("you said you approve but I only see one patch from them,
are you sure?" or otherwise asking the sponsor for more info). I don't
remember that ever ending in disagreement between the sponsor and the
admin though.

> Instead, wouldn't it make more sense to require other non-sponsors to
> approve too? This would create a meaningful review process and prevent
> one person from approving all their friends willy-nilly.

...but you're right that this still means dev access requests are
approved by 1 person (the sponsor), and if you think that should
change, that's a valid discussion to have with the wider community.

--
Nicolás
KDE Sysadmin Team