[Queue-developers] More on new maintainer

[Werner K. <wk...@SD...>]

I think Mike's still getting acclimated to being the new GNU Queue
maintainer.

Both RMS and I fully support Mike. However, I think the best for the GNU
Queue community is not to do what I want to do, or what RMS wants to do,
what Mike wants to do, but what the GNU Queue community feels is in its
best interests. That's basically the idea of democracy, and we haven't had
enough of it around in the world of late IMHO, although this is a separate
topic for another list.

In the short term, Mike is the maintainer because RMS and I say he is.

In the longer term, however, I think that the standard should be that the
GNU Queue maintainer is whoever the GNU Queue community recognizes as the
GNU Queue maintainer.
That doesn't always mean making everyone happy (this is volunteer work,
people have real lives where they actually put the bread on their tables,
after all, and my understanding is --- RMS correct me if I'm work --- that
Mike was the only qualified person who really wanted this job), but it
does mean that the maintainer should take public responsibility for the
project and act in GNU Queue-maintainer like way.

And so, ultimately you, the GNU Queue community, must decide, over the
longer term (next few months) whether or Mike is your maintainer,
keeping in mind that it can, at times, be a difficult job and that there
hasn't been a long list of volunteers. I have also
found it a very rewarding and educational experience, so I hope that, as
Mike begins to take over the reins, more people will come forward and
volunteer to assist him. Perhaps, years from now, if the community grows
large enough, there could even be some sorts of informal email voting as
other Open Source projects have.

I hope that the GNU Queue community will provide every assistance to Mike
or whoever else you decide, at some point in the
future, should be the maintainer.

I've given Mike all of the keys necessary to be the GNU Queue maintainer,
including issue new releases, moderate the SourceForge forums, write to
the CVS repository, edit the on-line documentation, and post on all the
mailing lists, including queue-announce. Once I'm satisfied
he's fully accepted by the community (if only grudgingly) I will
irrevocably turn over the remaining few in a few weeks or so. For now,
however, suffice it to say he has my full support.

There are some things that I think would be helpful. I hope, after
becoming acclimated,
Mike will give us a very brief, or even a long, introduction to himself
and his goals or philosophy as the new maintainer and ask for the support
of the community in accomplishing those goals.

I haven't very much email contact with Mike since he came forwarded about
a week ago (I suppose he is a busy man), so I'm curious to learn of this
philosophy myself, and whether
or not there are any radical changes and new ideas in store for us. :-)

I still get emails from users occasionally because my email address is
listed in the source. I suppose one of the first that will need
eventually to be done is to issue a new release with Mike's email listed
as the maintainer. (The source actually asks for correspondence to go to
bug-queue which is currently being forwarded to queue-support; Mike might
want to change this and have bug-queue forward to him directly. The FSF
people can do this for him.)

A user requested that some of old compile bugs that have bitting sitting
on Sourceforge be fixed in a new release; that's up to Mike.

In any event, once again, please welcome Mike and provide
with any assistance, suggestions, and support
as he begins this challenging, albeit rewarding, task as
your new maintainer
 --
Werner G. Krebs, Ph.D.
Postgraduate Researcher
Integrative Biosciences
San Diego Supercomputer Center MC 0527
University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0527, USA