Flattening the CVS Acess Tree

[Jon Stevens <jo...@latchkey.com>]

The original Java Apache Project didn't have permission boundaries.

Everything was stored in /products/cvs/master and anyone could have modified
any of the other repos in there as needed. This is the way that *I* decided
to set things up.

Later, I decided to split things into different repos so that it would be
easier to manage user access so I could know who had access to what and
getting permission was as easy as simply asking for it. Big deal.

Over the last ~4 years of managing CVS tree's for literally hundreds of
people, I can only think of a single time where someone has asked for access
and not gotten it and that was because that person was not showing the
ability to follow code guidelines and their code stinked (this was years ago
on the Apache JServ project).

I don't like the idea of simply allowing people in one project to write over
what people have done in another project. I think it tends to mislead each
project's community around it because there is no permission to check with
first. It isn't about control, it is about enforcing respect and
communication.

The funny thing is that people rarely used their ability to edit across
projects even when they did have full access.

I think that flattening things is simply moving the problem around again. I
don't see why it is such a big friggen deal to simply ask for write access.
You would want people to do that anyway simply out of respect.

If Fede or Peter came to the Turbine project or any other project that I'm
heavily involved with and asked for write access so that they could
contribute, I would give it to them in a second (and in a good number of
cases, it is literally minutes). I don't see it being any different for any
other projects.

Giving commit access isn't what fosters or opens a community. It is becoming
part of the mailing list and actively participating that fosters community.

If you don't believe me, then look at the success of the Turbine project and
its *wonderful* community of people that 9.9 times out of 10 get along
perfectly.

Therefore, I'm going to have to give a -1 to flattening the tree and a +1 to
simply asking for permission.

thanks,

-jon