[dpdk-moving] Proposal for a new Committer model

["Mcnamara, John" <john.mcnamara@intel.com>]

Repost from the moving@dpdk.org mailing list to get a wider audience.
Original thread: http://dpdk.org/ml/archives/moving/2016-November/000059.html


Hi,

I'd like to propose a change to the DPDK committer model. Currently we have one committer for the master branch of the DPDK project. 

One committer to master represents a single point of failure and at times can be inefficient. There is also no agreed cover for times when the committer is unavailable such as vacation, public holidays, etc. I propose that we change to a multi-committer model for the DPDK project. We should have three committers for each release that can commit changes to the master branch.
 
There are a number of benefits:
 
1. Greater capacity to commit patches.
2. No single points of failure - a committer should always be available if we have three.
3. A more timely committing of patches. More committers should equal a faster turnaround - ideally, maintainers should also provide feedback on patches submitted within a 2-3 day period, as much as possible, to facilitate this. 
4. It follows best practice in creating a successful multi-vendor community - to achieve this we must ensure there is a level playing field for all participants, no single person should be required to make all of the decisions on patches to be included in the release.  

Having multiple committers will require some degree of co-ordination but there are a number of other communities successfully following this model such as Apache, OVS, FD.io, OpenStack etc. so the approach is workable.

John