[python-committers] Making the PSF CoC apply to core developers

[R. David Murray]

On Fri, 04 Mar 2016 21:31:44 +0000, Brett Cannon <brett at python.org> wrote:
> I guess I'm just worried about the health of this project. I'm doing what I
> can through the migration to GitHub to make it easier for others to get
> involved while making it easier for us to accept the work of others, but
> the maintenance and health of this team worries me. For instance, if you
> look at the developer's log you will notice we only gained 2 core devs for
> all of 2015 and the last one was August 2015:
> https://docs.python.org/devguide/developers.html. 2013 was the next slowest
> year with 4, but most years are much closer to 10 than 0. We also still
> have no female or minority members.

Remember how new committers happen: current committers notice their
contributions on the tracker, suggest they be given the commit bit and
offer to mentor them, and we take a poll.  The critical bits here are
(1) noticing and (2) being willing to mentor.  So, if we want more
committers, current ones need to put forth the effort to monitor active
bugs, evaluate prospects, and recommend and mentor them.  And hopefully
do some mentoring via the bug tracker to get more people commit-bit ready.

This is a catch 22: we need more active committers in order to get
more active committers.  But we know that; that question is what to do
about it.

I the past few years I've monitored the bug tracker fairly closely, and
watched for good prospects, and recommended or inspired the recommendation
of several.  Right now I don't have the time to monitor the bug tracker
the way I had been and watch people the way I had been, so I won't be
in a position to recommend anyone for the next while....

--David

PS: Actually, let me throw out that the people that had been at the
top of my list before I stopped were eryksun, paul.j3 (for argparse),
and davin (for multiprocessing).  And I suspect maciej.szulik is also a
candidate once we've seen a few more patches from him.  (And I need
to find the time to review the ones he has already submitted in the
email area.)

Someone or ones should look at tracker activity by username and see if
they can find some more candidates.