Hi,
On bigger or older projects, I see a recurring anti-pattern that some committers are still listed although they have not contributed anything for several years.
I'm aware project teams have the capability to remove committers, but I find that this is not very usual although it's a valid cleanup that is beneficial for the project (inactive committers may forgot to vote for other committers or important decisions, so they basically slow down decision making without providing value for the project). One reason why this may be unusual is that some more active but newer contributors may feel uncomfortable removing commit rights to their "elders" (which sometimes have even been mentors) and don't do the cleanup as it could be interpreted as a lack of respect. At least, that's how I felt several years ago when I first started about removing some commit rights, it's not an easy thing to do morally, although it clearly appeared as what's best for the project.
So I think the EDP and related tools could maybe make this task simpler to project teams.
EDP currently says:
"""
The Project Leads are responsible for ensuring the smooth operation of
the Project. A Committer who is disruptive, does not participate
actively, or has been inactive for an extended period may have his or
her commit status revoked by the Project Leads. Unless otherwise
specified, "an extended period" is defined as "no activity for more than
six months".
"""
which is good, however, I suggest we extend this power to PMC and even EMO, by appending something like:
"The project lead, PMC or EMO are in charge of maintaining the list of active committers and are all allowed to revoke committers status if activity criteria defined earlier are not met."
From here, it would be nice to have tools to encourage projects in doing the cleanup; some possible ways to do that:
* Have some bi-yearly message sent automatically from the PMI to the project mailing-lists to remind which committers are inactive in practice and remind them about the EDP part about activity being required for keep commit rights
* If some committers have not been active for multiple "extended periods" and were already notified several times about it, EMO would automatically remove them as committers.
What do you think?