Technical Release Manager for Samba

[Andrew Bartlett]

G'Day,

In thinking about 4 month release cycles, I've been concerned that our
current 'nobody is in charge'/consensus mode of operation may make practical
operation difficult.  

Now, much more than at times in the past, I think the team is finally at a
level of mutual respect where we could cope with someone being elected
into a position of leadership, 'in charge', as regards getting us to
actually make releases.

To be clear, I see this as being in addition to Karolin continuing in
her critical role, the aim would be instead to tackle the things we 
specifically excluded from that role:
 - championing features
 - applying technical insight to difficult choices
 - deciding what makes it in and doesn't for a particular release, where there isn't a timely consensus.
 - and more generally providing leadership and project direction. 

The idea is to ensure that Karolin can do the mechanics (the 'doing') 
with support, confidence and greater ease.  In particular, I'm keen that
Karolin has someone to rely on to make the difficult technical choices
that will ensure that releases ship on time.

Note, this specifically would not be a general 'community evangelist' role, 
and any candidate would specifically need a strong technical background 
to be successful.

(I do think it is important that we establish some kind of decision
making power, but restricted to matters of the release (and the features
enabled and default behaviours therein), issues around what is
acceptable for development in master would continue as-is, but hopefully
with some strong and respected guidance. )

How do others feel about this?

Andrew Bartlett

-- 
Andrew Bartlett
http://samba.org/~abartlet/
Authentication Developer, Samba Team  http://samba.org
Samba Developer, Catalyst IT          http://catalyst.net.nz/services/samba