Why commit access really isn't important (was: Re: [Xcb] Committing to xcb?)

[Carl Worth]

On Wed, 2 May 2007 14:58:01 +0200, Matthias Hopf wrote:
> requesting commit permissions is at the utter core of the open source
> development process, and *should* be answered (yes sure, no way, yes but
> only in a branch, prove yourself worthy, we only accept patches, etc.).

As a total aside, allow me to totally disagree about the "utter core"
aspect of commit permissions. The whole notion of commit permissions
is vestige of centralized version-control systems.

With tools like git, it's really, really easy to ignore the whole
question of commit permissions. So, if Jamey and Bart are being slow
to respond here, you should just be happily creating commits. Then
when they wake up, they'll be able to merge all the work you've done
with no real effort.

And, if there were a case where the merge didn't happen for some
reason, (not that I'm expecting it here). Let's imagine the original
maintainer disappeared off the face of the earth, for example. In that
case, the repository you would have with your commits on top of what
you originally got would be a full-fledged repository and could simply
be declared the new canonical home of the code.

This is what Linus is talking about when he talks about the ease of a
possible fork keeping the maintainer honest. See his very recent
discourse on why "commit access" is not fundamental, (rebutting recent
text that appeared in a book on open source development):

	http://marc.info/?l=git&m=117803847621720&w=2

-Carl
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