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