How are [MAINTAINER] patches handled and why aren't PRs FIFO?

[Matthias Andree]

Am 28.04.2011 00:39, schrieb John Marino:

> I was working the assumption that he agrees to the port up front or
> voluntarily picks up the next task.  However, if someone has a repeated
> history of refusals or only wants to do a very narrow set of tasks, then
> maybe commit bit removal isn't that dramatic.

It will leave one frustrated committer who will likely turn his back to
the project and leave altogether, and, that point was made before, leave
his work undone -- and that means BOTH the work he didn't pick that you
wanted to punish for, and the work he did do.  And redistributing the
latter is painful for all others.

Given that committers aren't likely to inflict pain to themselves, such
a system isn't going to be established.

Let's for the sake of the argument assume that committers are neither
deliberately brushing maintainers off, nor ignoring/neglecting them, nor
bored.

If you work with volunteers, you need incentive, not repression or
threat.  Robert suggested a who's who of committers, which might be
helpful for some auto-assignment after a week or two.

I for one am not against such auto-assignments, and I believe that
there's some overhead in the status quo that causes this to NOT happen.
 Teaming up maintainers for a set of ports means setting up aliases or
lists.  Teaming up committers for a set of ports either happens through
projects such as KDE or GNOME, or not at all.

I for one am also open for teaming up and getting some ports in my areas
of expertise auto-assigned to me, but I am not actively looking for them.

Let's think a bit more about Robert's who's who list, what it could be
used for (technical auto-assignment after timeouts, or a mere contacts
list for maintainers were mentioned), and about incentive for committers.

The cheapest incentive would be to make some process easier.  Now, what
to we want to make easier?  For committers?  For maintainers?

How can we keep maintainers in a good mood and motivated even if their
submissions linger for longer than they feel fair?