1.. _rfc-9: 2 3=============================================== 4RFC 9: GDAL Paid Maintainer Guidelines 5=============================================== 6 7Author: Frank Warmerdam 8 9Contact: warmerdam@pobox.com 10 11Status: Approved 12 13Purpose 14------- 15 16To formalize guidelines for the work of maintainers paid out of GDAL 17project sponsorship funds. 18 19Responsibilities 20---------------- 21 221. Analyse and where possible fix bugs reported against GDAL. 232. Run, review and extend the test suite (via buildbot, etc). 243. Maintain and extend documentation. 254. Assist integrating new contributed features. 265. Help maintain project infrastructure (mailing lists, buildbot, source 27 control, etc) 286. Provide user support on the project mailing lists, and in other 29 venues. 307. Develop new capabilities. 31 32Bug fixing and maintenance should be focused on GDAL/OGR, but as needed 33will extend into sub-projects such as libtiff, libgeotiff, Shapelib and 34MITAB as long it is to serve a need of the GDAL/OGR project. 35 36In order to provide reasonable response times the maintainer is expected 37spend some time each week addressing new bugs and user support. If the 38maintainer will be unavailable for an extended period of time (vacation, 39etc) then the supervisor should be notified. 40 41Direction 42--------- 43 44The maintainer is generally subject to the project PSC. However, for day 45to day decisions one PSC member will be designated as the supervisor for 46the maintainer. This supervisor will prioritize work via email, bug 47assignments, and IRC discussions. 48 49The supervisor will try to keep the following in mind when prioritizing 50tasks. 51 52- Bug reports, and support needs of Sponsors should be given higher 53 priority than other tasks. 54- Areas of focus identified by the PSC (ie. multi-threading, SWIG 55 scripting) should be given higher priority than other tasks. 56- Bugs or needs that affect many users should have higher priority. 57- The maintainer should be used to take care of work that no one else 58 is willing and able to do (ie. fill the holes, rather than displacing 59 volunteers) 60- Try to avoid tying up the maintainer on one big task for many weeks 61 unless directed by the PSC. 62- The maintainer should not be directed to do work for which someone 63 else is getting paid. 64 65Substantial new development projects will only be taken on by the 66maintainer with the direction of a PSC motion (or possibly an RFC 67designating the maintainer to work on a change). 68 69Note that the maintainer and the maintainer supervisor are subject to 70the normal RFC process for any substantial change to GDAL. 71 72Reporting 73--------- 74 75The maintainer will produce a brief bi-weekly report to the gdal-dev 76list indicating tasks worked on, and a more detailed timesheet for the 77supervisor. 78 79This is intended to provide visibility into status, accomplishments, and 80time allocation. It also gives an opportunity for the PSC to request a 81"course correction" fairly promptly. 82