= phenomenon =
The current policy for provenpackagers at https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Who_is_allowed_to_modify_which_packages includes three basic reasons for modifying packages for which you are not a listed maintainer. These include:
I'd like to add a fourth reason.
= reason =
"General cleanup" covers a lot of situations, but not necessarily when the changes are "general improvements" or "general new features" beyond a narrow conception of "cleanup". We could just say "cleanup includes this", but it seems more clear to add another point.
This would cover things like conversion of init scripts (or cron jobs, if that becomes a priority) to systemd units — and, at hand, the project of changing many hard Requires to soft dependencies.
= recommendation =
Add
to the summary, and in more details, something like:
Sometimes, we may want to make big changes which go beyond cleanup, in support of a Council-approved Fedora Objective. These changes will be easier to make in coordination rather than individually. In these situations, FESCo will approve a plan, including the scope of the changes and a communication plan for package maintainers with packages which may be affected.
Seems reasonable to me and a lot more specific than "general cleanups".
In particular, it provides "air cover" to provenpackagers doing some of this (like the Python 3 conversion, the init script conversion and the dependencies) that they can point to a directive from FESCo.
This also seems fine/reasonable to me.
Hm. I like the idea and really have no objections behind the intentions.
I do wonder what such a "plan" would look like. Does it have to have start and end dates? Does it have to be documented in a FESCo ticket and/or wiki page? Does it have to be announced?
As soon as you add the plan caveat behind allowing people to commit changes for a Council Objective, you get into lots of process-y questions. I'd almost rather we avoid as much process as possible in the spirit of actually getting things done. Perhaps we could simply have FESCo discuss an Objective in a meeting, agree with the general kind of work to be done, and then send an email to devel@ stating provenpackagers will be working on $thing going forward?
Approved today.
I made edits to the wiki page:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Who_is_allowed_to_modify_which_packages
Please feel free to reword.
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