[Sugar-devel] core maintainers

[Martin Langhoff]

On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 4:11 AM, Tomeu Vizoso <tomeu at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> Hmm, I have never heard of a company taking over maintenance of a
> module, anybody has references? It uses to be the individuals who
> accept the responsibility of maintaining a module.

I do. In the case of Moodle, both "MoodleHQ", various Moodle Partners
(I used to work for one of them, AFAIK the "largest" one in terms of
contributions, by a large margin), plus various universities pledge "a
developer in charge or maintenance & bugfixing for component X".

They hire someone, pay him/her to do the job; maybe the developer
"clicks" with the task, or doesn't. Where things fall into place,
everything is a lot better and easier, of course, and the developer
feels the responsibility as personal.

As usual, it doesn't always work well, but that's true of all modes of
assigning maintainership.

I personally favour having both: personal *and* institutional
commitment. Like many things in life, you cannot control when/where it
starts. But you sure know where you want it to lead to...

cheers,


m
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