I'm specifically requesting not to have checkin privileges. So there.
I will force nobody to use checkin privileges. However I see that for some contributors, checkin privileges will save me and them time.
I see two problems:
1. When patches go thru you, you at least eyeball them. This catches bugs and design errors early.
I will still eyeball them -- only after the fact. Since checkins are pretty public, being slapped on the wrist for a bad checkin is a pretty big embarrassment, so few contributors will check in buggy code more than once. Moreover, there will be more eyeballs.
2. For a multi-platform app, few people have adequate resources for testing; e.g., I can test under an obsolete version of Win95, and NT if I have to, but that's it. You may not actually do better testing than that, but having patches go thru you allows me the comfort of believing you do <wink>.
I expect that the same mechanisms will apply. I have access to Solaris, Linux and Windows (NT + 98) but it's actually a lot easier to check portability after things have been checked in. And again, there will be more testers. --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)