[development] CVS Approval Policy: was Re: new features in D6 core?

[Andrew Schulman]

> A quick observation here, and feel free to flame this mercilessly [1].
> 
> As I see it, the purpose of the review of application should be to 
> determine whether the applicant will comply with the d.o requirements 
> regarding licensing, etc -- it should *not* be to judge the merits of 
> the proposed module.
> 
> In this case, and in others I have seen, people have been unnecessarily 
> hassled during the CVS application process.
> 
> As a community, we are shooting ourselves in the foot if we hassle/turn 
> away developers, especially when we are turning them away for invalid 
> reasons.
> 
> If Andrew hadn't posted to the Dev list, his good idea would not have 
> had the opportunity to make it into the community. I wonder how many 
> other good ideas have been lost for the exact same reason.

Well, here's my view.

Yes, I'm a new contributor to Drupal.  I read the new maintainer documents and
followed the advice there, but I didn't expect to get it all right the first
time.

I was disappointed and a little frustrated that my CVS account was denied,
mainly because it wasn't clear to me how else I was supposed to get my code out
to the community.  But the reason for the denial, although very shortly stated,
has merit.  We don't want a bunch of trivial modules cluttering up Drupal-- I
get that.

So I asked on the forums and filed a patch against 6.x core, but I didn't get an
answer in either place.  But those are noisy places, so I just figured I needed
to keep trying.  Once I wrote to this list, I got an answer right away and a
positive result.

So in short I'd say:

- The reason for denying my account was valid, but it should have considered, or
suggested, what the alternative might be for me to make my code available.

- A new developer should expect to need some patience in engaging the community
about their contribution.  If they're serious about contributing, they'll stick
to it.

It did occur to me, that a person who already had a CVS account could have
contributed the same module at their discretion, while I couldn't because I
didn't have an account yet.  So it seems that CVS approval was being used as a
proxy for module approval.  But I also agree that new developers should pass a
threshold test for making a sound contribution.

Anyway, the community came through in the end.  I wouldn't worry about it too
much.

Andrew.