M.-A. Lemburg wrote:
BTW: How about having an "incubator" phase for new core devs ? The new candidate will get commit rights for say 3 months and after those 3 months, the mentor then suggests whether make the status permanent or not.
As long as this is stated clearly from the beginning, I don't think people will feel offended if they end up not receiving the permanent status, and this will reduce the barrier for entry a lot. Learning on the job is a rather common practice in the industry these days :-)
As someone who received commit rights based entirely (almost?) on willingness rather than contributions, I think this is a great idea. I certainly would not have been at all offended if I'd been told "don't touch anything apart from X and we'll reevaluate in three months." Being clear about it at the start is the important part - having a title like "probationary" or "provisional" makes that pretty easy.
Cheers, Steve