Re: In support of Jonas Bernoulli's Magit

[phillip.lord@russet.org.uk (Phillip Lord)]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
> [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
> [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]
>
>   > 1) Get list of all contributors
>   > 2) Email them all, recording the date
>   > 3) Email those who respond instructions
>   > 4) Email assign@fsf to find out current status
>   > 5) Email those who havent again
>   > 6) Reply to people who say "haven't heard anything"
>   > 7) Repeat some variation of 4,5, and 6
>
>   > 8) Work out how many are left
>   > 9) Once n < 3 or 4 check how big their contributions are
>   > 10) Write them out
>
> Step 4 is due to FSF procedures, so I will try to change them to
> eliminate it.  I hope the clerk will directly notify the person
> managing this process when each package contributor's papers arrive.

That will be an excellent addition. Also, it would be good to know when
the FSF forms have gone to the contributor -- assuming assignment is
still a two step process.

The reason for this is that people will say "sent it off, not heard
anything back yet". I don't know how long the assignment process spends
at the FSF end; this could all be postage.


> The rest, however, has nothing to do with how the FSF operates.  At
> least, not that I can see.  It is rather the nature of persuading many
> individuals to do something, independent of what the something is.
>
> Do you have any suggestions for how to simplify parts other than step
> 4?

Having a way to track emails going out on a specific topic would be
helpful; this would make it easier to track when you last emailed some
one about assignment.


> Step 8 is easy if you make a list of all the contributors, one per
> line, and add a * once a contributors's papers are done.  I think that
> will be faster and easier than using RT to keep track of them.

I used org-mode to achieve this, and yes it does help.

If we wish to turn this into a bit more of a factory, though, we might
have a contributor who contributes to more than one package, so getting
a single set of papers might have implications for more than one
project. This is where some sort of tracker might help.

Still, it's a smaller issue than notifications.

> We don't have to wait till there are only 4 nonsigning contributors to
> start steps 9 and 10.  It would be feasible to do with 10 or 20 or 50
> contributors left out, if their code is small.  Thus, I suggest
> identifying after a few months those whose code is not too hard to
> replace.

Actually, I do this at the beginning. Not all contributors actually have
code in the current version, so it's good to know this from the
start. For dash, I just asked everybody, though, on the basis that if
they had code in before, they might do in the future.

Phil